


Full Fathom Five

by imperialhuxness



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (I promise!!), (see summary/warnings), Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Rey, Disordered Eating, Established Relationship, Flashbacks, Force Bond (Star Wars), How to Destroy Your Evil Empire in Five Simple Steps!, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Secret Relationship, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Wet Dream, the Netherworld of the Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2019-10-16 06:53:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 114,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17544809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperialhuxness/pseuds/imperialhuxness
Summary: One year after the Battle of Crait, the Supreme Leader is dead, and the First Order has crumbled. Hux is adjusting poorly to prison life when the newest last Jedi makes him an offer he can't refuse....“I’m sure my insights-” Hux starts, then corrects himself, sealing the Ren-shaped chink in his mental armor, “-mylimitedinsights into his demise would give you no help your Force already hasn’t.”“Not your insights.” Rey leans back a bit. “Your memories.”





	1. To Suffering

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This starts off dark, so please mind the tags. (But also mind Angst with a Happy Ending--this was going to be a 10K oneshot, but no, I just couldn't leave things sad.) 
> 
> Detailed content warnings will be in the end notes for each chapter--stay safe! <3

Hux doesn’t so much toss the book aside as let it fall. He slings one arm over the side of his cot and releases the only nonfiction title they’ve brought to his cell,  _Chandrila: A Zoological Compendium._ Four hundred thirty-five flimsiplast pages printed sometime during the Old Republic’s decline. Battered spine, faded, technicolor holos of long-tailed preepnobs and sharp-clawed pripraks. He’s gotten no better look at the planet in his first six weeks here.

This is his second time through the _Compendium_ in the past four days, but it’s a sight better than the other four selections: more Old Republic hardcopies that are decidedly antiques rather than classics. (The penitentiary apparently doesn’t trust nefarious one-time engineers with even a totally disconnected datapad.)

Regardless, he’s stacked the four books in the far corner of his cell, across from the alcove serving as his 'fresher. The _Compendium_ needs to rejoin them--Hux can’t have his few possessions scattered all over the floor.

Bracing himself with an inhale, he swings his legs over the side of the cot. First he bends to grab the discarded book, then stands as slowly, as cautiously as possible. It doesn’t work: the blood drains from his head immediately, his vision tunneling to fuzzy blots of shadow. He gropes for the wall, splaying his hand against the white paneling to steady himself. He stands wax-still until it passes, blinking as the dark blurs recede.

“Fuck,” he says aloud, sight recovered but legs still treacherous.

Three days out of the infirmary, and he’s still this weak. He even ate breakfast this morning, everything on the tray, but his body is apparently still recovering from the shock of thirty-two days on water and the occasional vegetable. He wouldn’t be eating now if not for the protocol officer’s threat of a feeding tube, after his collapse and transport to medical. They’d said he didn’t get to terminate his own sentence.

Yes, they’re keeping him alive. They’ll spend their hard-won taxpayer credits to make sure he suffers until natural death. _(Congratulations, galaxy, it’s working.)_

He crosses the narrow strip of floor to his book stacks, braces himself against the wall again as he stoops to replace the _Compendium_ and select one of the other, even-less-refined titles. Half-bent, half-crouched, he thumbs through _Splintered Heart; Dearest, You Said; The Symphony of the Spark;_ and a real treasure called _The Impossible Spindle._

He’s managed just _Spindle_ in the first month of his sentence, the plot too bland, the prose too florid, and his concentration wrecked by malnutrition. The rest are from the same defunct publisher, so his hopes are infernally low. He picks through them, nonetheless: even _Splintered Heart_ beats staring at the wall and _remembering_. He finally lands on _Dearest_ because at least it’s gay.

He thumbs back the cover, and it flops limply open to a lurid first line about a Twi’lek hooker. _Good gods._ Of course. He’s staring down the barrel of the rest of his life, and the one string tying him to sanity is fucking xeno porn. He rubs his temples, feels hysterical laughter building inside him at the absurdity of it

He doesn’t laugh, he doesn’t, because Armitage Hux may faint of hunger, but he won’t be caught laughing alone in his cell like his mind has already shattered. ( _“Didn’t take much,”_ they’ll say. _“He always seemed delicate.”_ )

Ren would laugh, though, if he were here. Hux can almost hear him, the sardonic smirk and the rumble of amusement: _“Your taste has slipped without me.”_

But Ren would laugh at the book, too, then they’d laugh at it together, like they did at eight out of every ten holodramas in their rare spare moments. Ren counted the flat characters’ dimensions, and Hux scuttled new and bigger holes in the flimsy plots. They enjoyed nothing, and therefore everything.

But Ren isn’t here (Ren is _gone_ ), and Hux needs something, anything, to look at besides the blank walls. He’s shut _Dearest, You Said_ and resigned himself to his fate when a voice at his cell door startles him.

“Zero Six One Nine Nine.”

That’s him. Hux turns and takes the few short steps to put himself in view of the transparent panel of the door. Outside stand two unfamiliar wardens in cortosis body armor.

"Zero Six One Nine Nine," repeats the taller of the two wardens, with the distinctive relish they all seem to take in reducing him to a number. ( _CD-0922. FN-2187. 06199._ ) (Turnabout. Fair play.) "You have a visitor."

It’s all Hux can do not to sigh, roll his eyes, and tip his head toward the ceiling in exasperation. _Will the deluge_ never _stop?_  

His first month saw a flurry of invitations to meet with visiting journalists, high on freedom of the press and looking for that exclusive interview with the shade of a tyrant. He’d turned them all down, of course. It looks like he’ll have to keep up the pattern until they catch on.

“I decline,” he says, primly, like he has every time before.

"You're not allowed to decline. Not for this visitor." It's the shorter guard this time. He has a Core accent--Corellian, if Hux isn't mistaken. A volunteer, then. And from a less-than-political culture--a true believer. Charming.

“I am allowed to decline,” Hux starts. “I’m under no obligation to grant press interviews during my term.”

“This ain’t press, Zero Six One Nine Nine,” drawls the taller guard, as the shorter one keys the transparent cell doors open.

“Then who's asking for me?” Hux asks, starting to fidget with the book. He works his fingers over the spine, and steps backward reflexively as the cell doors slide apart.  
  
The guards, both mostly muscle, enter with a pair of magnetic binders, and don’t answer. There’s a finality to the silence, and Hux has no desire to humiliate himself by persisting.

Out of habit, he gives the guards a cursory once-over once at arms-length, a two-second threat assessment. Blue and white uniforms meshed with the body armor. Tasers at their belts, a model with a built-in safety that prevents the weapon from ever reaching a fatal voltage. It'll run out of battery after a single stun. Fucking useless pacifist shit.  
  
In the space of a second, he imagines trying to resist, getting stunned and passing out for a few hours to avoid whatever the hell this is about, but before he can ball a fist, they've seized his wrists. The binders click shut, and a red light blinks on in the strip joining them, denoting _locked_ position.  
  
They steer him out into the corridor, where dozens of identical cell entrances gape out of the silvered walls. Behind them, dozens of fellow solitary-confinement inmates languish in identical grey uniforms with a black Republic phoenix blazoned above the right breast. Not only do you spend the remainder of your life dependent on whatever their feeble tax system can scrape together for a penitentiary budget, you wear their symbol, too.  
  
"Private Conference Two?" the taller guard confirms, a Chandrilan lisp slipping into his pronunciation. Local boy, likely co-opted into the job for shit pay and no benefits. The newest New Republic can't possibly afford much in the way of personnel expenses.  
  
"Yeah, that's what VisControl said in the request comm," returns the second guard. They walk in silence.  
  
Hux would have done right by people like them. Hell, he had (or would have, anyway, with more time), on his and Ren's planets. It had worked for a while, their little constellation of government done right: fences, conveyor belts, heads down, full stomachs, universal curricula. Everything under control.

Of course, they had lost to entropy. The laws of the universe win, every time.  
  
The guards veer aside and lead Hux through a slim gate and pedway out of the solitary confinement annex and into the facility's main building.  
  
The pedway is narrow and windowless, which is almost disappointing. Chandrila was supposed to be a beautiful planet, from what Hux had gleaned from Ren over the years - all mist-topped mountains and dense evergreen forests. Even the urban zones, Ren had said, retained that _organic_ sense, as if deftly grafted into the local ecosystems, rather than built on their charred remains.

Hux had caught only a brief glimpse of the landscape between the detention room of the Republic transport and the penitentiary speeder that met it at Chandrila’s main military spaceport. The air had been warm and humid, typical for a deciduous world. Sweat had prickled his skin under his greatcoat, but he didn’t take it off. His guards wouldn’t react well to the sudden movement, and besides, they were going to take it from him soon enough. (In hindsight he should have whipped it off and let them blast a hole in his skull. When they next took him out, for the trial, it was too late.)  
  
Beyond the spaceport, beyond the city limits, had stretched dark forests, topped with shreds of spring-morning fog. Far past them, mountains held up the horizon, white-capped and indomitable.  
  
At one time, Hux had wanted to rule from here--build their palace on the ashes of the broken system that originated on Chandrila--but Ren had adamantly refused. He cited strategic rationale at first, but Hux had doubted him. His sentiments were unpredictable, unstable, whether from legitimate attachment or lingering bad memories.

But whatever it might have implied, Ren had still agreed with Hux that Chandrila was beautiful, though he’d seen little of it outside nursery walls.

But when Hux had asked about simply visiting it, after its government surrendered, Ren had clenched his fist until the glove seams strained, and looked down. “ _You know I’m not going back there_ ,” he’d said.

Hux had let it drop, permanently. Now he’s got more time on Chandrila than he’ll ever enjoy. If Ren were here, he would smirk and say the will of the Force is stupid like that sometimes.

But if Ren were here, Hux wouldn’t be. Even if the Order had still fallen from under their feet, they’d be anywhere but here. Ren would--

 _Stop._ Hux cuts off that line of thought, as he always tries to. The notion of _missing him_ doesn’t help. It won’t keep Hux from falling on his face in this hallway. He stares at his feet instead, stupid soft rubber shoes padding across the tile.

Once they've entered the main structure, it's a lift ride and a few sharp turns into a corridor whose rooms are alternately labeled 'conference' and 'interrogation.' What the hell can the difference be, in prison.  
  
"How long has she been waiting?" asks the Corellian guard as Hux's escorts begin to slow their pace.  
  
_She_. Hux doesn't catch the response. _She_. Out of the several prominent women within the Resistance-turned-central-government, any one of them would carry enough clout that she couldn’t be turned down. But he’s already got his life sentence, and their judiciary prevents double jeopardy. They’ve as good as killed him--why come gloat over the corpse?  
  
His legs feel vaguely insubstantial, either like two streams of water holding up his weight or like a pair of rogue cybernetics staggering along beside him, readily observable but not attached to himself. Somehow, he stays vertical.

The guards finally stop outside what must be Private Conference Two, and they guide him through the open entrance. There's no alternate exit, he notes, before anything else. In the center of the sterile-white room sits a narrow rectangular table with a magnetic dock for binders on the near side. In the chair opposite sits the Jedi. The blood drains from Hux's head again.

Something like anger flares in his chest, but even that feels distant, a blip in the white-noise static of his thoughts, yet still inaccessible and ill-defined. It shouldn’t be.

This is _the girl._ Who’d loaded Starkiller with explosives and smuggled her co-conspirators off Crait. Who’d quietly incited rebellions on world after world, until freedom fighting had spread like a cough through a starship’s crew, and there was nothing left of everything he’d built.

This is _the girl._ Who’d insisted on prodding at Ren’s imbalance, had gathered from a few snatches of shared connection the vulnerabilities that Hux had struggled till the end to understand. (Hux himself, Ren had told him once, was the only weakness of his she hadn’t searched out.)  
  
This is the girl, of course, but she’s no longer the feral scavenger from the security holos on Starkiller and _Supremacy._ This is a warrior, who knows it. (A warrior, not a soldier, and there’s a world of difference.)

She sits straight-backed but angled forward, hands folded in front of her on the tabletop. Both her feet are on the ground, planted far apart, as if to intentionally take up as much space as she can. Under the table, there’s the glint of a lightsaber hilt at her belt, an extravagant dual-bladed model that Ren would have reluctantly admired.

As the guards steer Hux into the chair across from her and secure his binders to the tabletop, he idly wonders how she got it past security. Part of him is flattered. At least someone brings a real weapon to an interaction with him.  
  
She meets his eyes for a brief, piercing second. Her gaze cuts in a focused way that Ren's never had, not even in the throes of rage, Force or no Force behind it. It doesn't have the oppressive _presence_ of Snoke's glance, either. It's sharp, harsh, like something freshly iced over.  
  
However, she has no chance to speak before the guards confirm that everything is satisfactory.  
  
"It is," she tells them, "and please lock the doors behind you." They do. She doesn't speak again until after the hiss and click of the closing doors has faded.  
  
"Armitage Hux," she says slowly, appraisingly. Her gaze searches the hollows of his face, the prominent contour of his collarbone, then falls to his wrists. She must be noticing the faintly yellow tint of the skin. "You're unwell," she adds, as if that's some great Force-revelation.  
  
Hux summons nearly a decade of practice, and ignores the theatrics. "I have already cooperated with multiple interrogations prior to my sentencing. If this is another, I hereby invoke my right to legal counsel before responding to any questions."  
  
There hadn't been much left to cooperate on at the original interrogations. There hadn't been anything of the Order left to betray, but he'd mostly been too numb to think of his oaths, his non-disclosure agreements, or even to play hardball and hope they broke their code of ethics to introduce potentially-fatal torture.  
  
"This isn't an interrogation, Armitage," Rey says. "I mean, not in the legal sense."  
  
"An _il_ legal interrogation, then." Hux picks at his palms despite the binders, jagged nails grating against the skin. "Splendid."  
  
Rey shakes her head. "This isn't about a crime. It isn't even about you. Consider it..." She leans forward, looking suddenly very young and very eager. "...a conversation. In which I'm asking you a favor."  
  
"A favor." Hux tries for a disdainful echo, but his tone falls flat and weary in his own ears. But he’s curious despite himself: "And what do you think I have to offer?"  
  
Rey glances at the tabletop, then back up at Hux. “Kylo Ren."  
  
She might as well have struck Hux. Drawn her lightsaber and ignited it. Plunged it through the pit of his stomach. He bites his lip, hard, on reflex. It's been a solid nine days since he last wept (counting the time unconscious in the infirmary, but still). He's fully planning on making it to double digits this time. He digs his nails deeper into his skin, focuses on the sting of it.  
  
"What about him," he manages, without affect. Because he had better learn how to say it, he forces himself to add, "He's dead."  
  
_He's dead, he's dead, he's dead, and I couldn't stop him._  
  
"Yes," says Rey, softer now, "and I want to know what happened."  
  
Hux swallows, forces himself to meet her eyes. If this is somehow a roundabout, misguided assassination charge, there’s evidence against it. Even Republic labs should know a self-inflicted wound when they see one.

"I'm sure they did the- forensics," he manages.  
  
The word tastes rotten. Hux blinks back images of yellow tape in their quarters on the _Finalizer_ , a body bag, an autopsy Y-cut to match the rest of Ren's scars. His vision swims briefly with black fuzz. He blinks, and doesn't faint or vomit.  
  
"The forensics aren't the whole story," Rey is saying, "I understand the two of you had your differences, but you _were_ the one with the closest access to him in his last days, correct?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
Hux's 'why' must be implicit. Without breaking eye contact, Rey explains: "As you may know, I'm...studying the Force.” (Hux didn’t, but it takes no leap of logic.)

Rey goes on, “I’m hoping to train others someday. To do that properly, I need to know where things went wrong for Kylo Ren. To make sure neither I nor my future students make the same mistakes."  
  
Heat swells in Hux's stomach, a sort of burning beside the gut-punched, impaled feeling. It takes him a moment to realize it's offense. Hux’s life’s work was to evaluate, criticize, and verbally eviscerate Ren’s every decision, but Rey has no right to sit here and clinically slap the label ‘mistakes’ on it all. (Who cares how right she is.)

"I can't help you," he says. And means, _I won't, you bitch._  
  
"I realize you don't know everything, but I'm desperate for anything you do. Any piece will help." Rey spreads her hands. The layered, off-white armbands around her wrists, Hux realizes, are the one piece of her attire he recognizes from the security footage.

“I’m sure my insights-” Hux starts, then corrects himself, sealing the Ren-shaped chink in his mental armor, “-my _limited_ insights into his demise would give you no help your Force already hasn’t.”

“Not your insights.” Rey leans back a bit. “Your memories.”

Hux’s pulse shoots up, a spike of adrenaline at just the thought of violation.

“You want to get inside my head?” There’s nothing stopping her from reading him right now, barging into his brain and taking whatever she wants.

“Only with your consent, of course.” Rey shifts forward again, a suppressed eagerness running under her tone. “I won’t see anything you don’t purposely show me. But that way I can... glean my own insights, if you want to put it that way.”

“No.”

“Armitage,” she says, and his given name rankles almost as much as _06199_. “I wouldn’t be here if this weren’t...critically important.”

Sure, the future of the Jedi Order must be important, avoiding having all of your students massacred by a depressed man-child must be important, but to come to _Hux_ for help? Without even _knowing_ about himself and Ren, and what they had? Well. Desperation is clearly a bad look on her.

“I have absolutely no reason to help you, Master Jedi,” he says. “Surely even you can understand that.”

Rey ignores the barb and sits quietly for a moment, wetting her lips. “The game’s up, Armitage. There are no more sides to take.” She leans forward, bare elbows on the table between them. “Don’t you want to do something that will _help people_ for once?”

Hux would recoil if not for the cuffs. He didn’t offer much defense in court--it would have done nothing but further humiliate him--but here, the implicit accusation feels personal. “I _was_ helping people,” he retorts.

“By sowing violence and oppression in the name of a bankrupt concept of security.”

Good gods. Apparently even prison is no escape from the Republic’s propaganda machine.

“Does Organa have you memorize that line, or do you sometimes get to paraphrase?”

“Nobody had to _teach me_ to believe in freedom,” Rey all but spits back, with a vehemence that evokes a desert orphan who stared up at the stars and wondered.

As if Hux is supposed to be impressed by her capacity for independent thought.

He smirks despite himself. “Well, no one taught you anything at all without a standard public education system in place.”

Rey bristles visibly at that, pausing as if to dredge more prop lines from a teeming reservoir.  The tension, however, dissolves quickly into an exasperated sigh. “I’m not here for a politics lesson from the _losing side_ ,” she snaps, then inhales, appearing to gather herself and recall that the war is over. “I just need your help.”

Hux scoffs. “Insulting my politics is some way you’ve got of securing it.”

“Then how would you propose I do it?” There’s something fierce and barely restrained in her tone.

“I already told you,” Hux says. “There’s no benefit in it for me.” He presses his lips into the thinnest possible line.

“There shouldn’t have to be a--” Rey cuts herself off, closes her eyes for a moment. “Okay.” She inhales.  “What do you want?”

In the silence before he answers, Hux erects the strongest mental shields he can conjure, music and schematics and formulas in the fore of his consciousness--anything to tamp down _Ren_. Not his presence, not anymore, but the void where he used to be that’s constantly screaming his name.

Hux does his best at dismissive arrogance. “Nothing you can give me.”

Rey studies Hux’s face in silence, as if vivisecting his bloodshot eyes and the bruise on his left temple, faded since his fall four days ago. “I suppose not,” she agrees, after a few moments.

Hux doesn’t answer, but Rey adds, “I’ll be back, though. Something might change your mind.”

“Doubtful,” Hux all but murmurs, fighting for equilibrium. The image of y-cut lines resurfaces, unbidden, at the back of his mind, just present enough to make his stomach light, and his eyes wet.

Rey rises, grabs the commlink mounted beside the door, and calls for the guards to escort Hux back to his cell.

* * *

In the week that follows, they bring him fresh entertainment. It’s probably Rey’s doing, but it’s too welcome a relief to scorn on principle. The first day, it’s nothing particularly enthralling--five new and shitty novels he dumps in the corner for a day when he has less to process.

He turns Rey’s visit over and over in his mind. She almost has to know about himself and Ren to even come to him for such a favor, but if she does, she made no sign of it. And there’s hardly any way she could know.

Perhaps Hux is one of many sources. He can picture Rey trotting around the Core with her elaborate lightsaber, interviewing anyone with a clue about Ren. She’ll go to Organa; slice into comms with his knights from his first year in the Order, while they were still alive; maybe chat with some underlings serving lighter sentences than Hux’s. (Mitaka could certainly give her some sensational accounts.)

She’ll take a story here and a memory there, pastiche them into a crude mosaic of a profile and title it _Kylo Ren: Disambiguation_ , as if she--or anyone--could truly pin him down.

Hux stares blankly at the heap of new and unopened books, and breaks his nine-day record.

* * *

The next day, matters somewhat improve. They bring a blank flimsipad and a stylus to write in it. That confirms Rey’s behind this: if she can’t get at his brain directly, maybe he’ll start a journal she can confiscate and psychoanalyze.

Ren would have loved it, but then again, knowing his sense of discretion, he’d have probably filled the thing with an autobiography in stunning free verse and calligraphied Sith mantras. Hux will give Rey no such satisfaction--but he’s too bored to squander this.

So he folds himself onto his cot and does the least personally identifiable, most time-consuming thing he can think of: coats a page in a grid of miniscule dots, each no wider than the tip of the stylus. Once the sheet is fully covered, he traces geometric patterns between the points. He figures it suits whatever’s left of his public persona: precise, dispassionate, obsessive-compulsive. No surprises for Rey or the psytechs there.

By the second day, he can stretch a page to an hour, if he erases every dot that’s even a fraction of a degree out of line and carefully redraws it as he goes. By the third day, he’s averaging an hour and a half. He allows himself three sheets a day, one after each meal. The pad has a hundred sheets (the label on the cover says so, but he counts to make sure), so by the time he’s filled them all, front and back, a fourth month here will have almost passed.

He’s halfway down page twenty-one when the guards return. _Visitor for 06199. Can’t be refused._

* * *

 

They take him down to the same room as before, latch his binders onto the same dock on the same table, across from the Jedi. Her hair is piled on top of her head today, just a few stray wisps curling down onto her neck. The guards seem not to notice that she’s fidgeting with her lightsaber. She turns it over and over slowly on top of the table.

She looks up at Hux when he enters.

Maybe she’s planning to threaten him. Who knows--if he can manage to piss her off enough, she might run him through in a fit of rage. It would be a shitty, humiliating way to go--killed by _her_ after everything--but whatever consequences her conscience and this justice system would heap on her for circumventing the law might just be worth it. Knowing she’ll suffer if she kills him--it allots him just a bit of power here. (That does, and the fact that he has what she needs.)

Rey dismisses the wardens, and they rush out, locking the door behind them. Hux makes a point of meeting her eyes, and says nothing of the books or flimsipad.

Rey sets her lightsaber down with a thump that reverberates faintly in the empty room.

“Armitage,” she says, very crisp, very controlled, as if she’s fighting for neutrality, “you lied to me last week.”

Hux can appreciate the glaring absence of small talk.  “Did I?”

Rey folds her hands behind her lightsaber, inhales. “You told me there’s nothing you want that I can give you.”

“I did,” he agrees.

“But there is. You just didn’t want to ask for it.”

“Oh.”

She could end him right now, one blow to the chest, then retract the blade. Leave a tidy, smoking hole where the heart used to be.

“I heard about your hunger strike,” she says. “By definition, that means there’s something you want.”

“It wasn’t a hunger strike.”

“I know.” Rey purses her lips and breaks eye contact with him for the first time since he entered the room. Then she reaches into her armband and extracts a second contraband weapon. It’s a monomolecular dagger, sheathed, silvered case gleaming under the lampdisk, catching the reflection of the stark white walls. The blade’s a few centimeters longer than Hux’s used to be, but apparently still easily concealed.

Rey sets it on the table with another prominent clack, between her lightsaber and his bound hands.

This can’t be what it looks like.

Hux affects a sneer. “You think I want a sharp object?”

Rey meets his eyes again, and her tone is level. “ _You_ want this to be over.”

Holy fuck. This is exactly what it looks like.

Hux’s pulse picks up, but he refuses to express enthusiasm. He raises his eyebrows.

“Doesn’t assisted suicide run contrary to your principles?”

“It does.” Rey’s voice tightens. “So if I give you this, I will do everything in my power to convince you not to use it. But I’m desperate, Armitage. I’m...willing to make the compromise.”

Hux realizes he’s sat forward in his chair, as much as is possible with his wrists mounted to the tabletop. He leans back with what he hopes is a calculating air.

This is an escape route--no more starvation, no more infirmary runs. No feeding tube, ever. It’s exactly what he needs. But it’s also a risk, a trust exercise with a hostile party.

A part of him wonders if this is being recorded, if it’s some kind of psychological experiment. But it doesn’t read like that. Surely it wouldn’t take an elaborate ruse involving illicit weaponry for them to figure out he’s suicidal. Isn’t that the point of a damn life sentence: you’re _supposed_ to spend the rest of your life wishing for death?

She must mean it, which sends a rush of exhilaration to his head. This could be _over._ But he needs to keep questioning.

“What changed your mind?” he asks. She tilts her head to one side, waiting for elaboration. “Last week you came in here appealing to my better nature, this week you’re trying to bribe me with a suicide weapon. Something’s changed.”

“Just reflection.” Rey shrugs, and it looks like a practiced gesture. She’s almost as open a book as Ren. “I was reminded how much I need what you know. It merits a higher price than I first offered.”

“I should think so.”

His memories are all he has. He won’t sell them so cheaply.

“Your life, or at least your ability to control it, for your memories,” she says. “Is that fair?”

He doesn’t answer, not quite. “If I do this,” he starts, slow and controlled, “at what point will I receive my payment?” He nods toward the knife.

“Whenever you’ve shared enough to answer my questions.”

“And when will that be?”

Rey sighs. “I don’t know. I have absolutely no way of knowing until I’ve seen what you have.”

“Clever,” Hux says, dully.

If she were to see everything Hux has witnessed--every doubt Ren entertained, every moment of weakness and conflict--this will never be over. He’ll be spilling the entirety of the last eight years of his life into her mind, and he can’t wait eight years to end this. Unless, perhaps, she won’t need to see it all.

“I’m not trying to be clever.” Rey’s hand strays to her lightsaber again, skinny fingers curling idly around the knobs. “I just don’t know how much you’ll be able to help me.”

“But you clearly think it’ll be substantial,” he prompts. He isn’t sure if he wants her to hear _how far will you push me_ , or not.

“I hope so.” Her gaze hardens. “But as I’ve said, I’m desperate for anything you have.”

She’s still obsessed with Ren. Hux has never been sure of the nature of the fixation--whether it’s romantic or philosophical, or just a result of pure dogged insistence that she was right about him. (Maybe she was.) Regardless, Hux shouldn’t betray him to her like this. It’s wrong. It’s a violation of trust.

But Ren was the one who left. He forfeited his say when he ran his lightsaber through his chest and abandoned Hux to entropy. (And besides, there’s _Kylo Ren: Disambiguation_ to consider. Ren deserves better than to go down in history as Mitaka’s monster or Organa’s wayward little boy.)

“When you give me this--” Hux says, still testing. He nods again toward the knife. “--and after I use it, where are they going to think I got it from? If you’ve been my primary visitor, isn’t that a bit incriminating?”

“I said I’m gonna do all I can to prevent you from using it.”

“And what if I use it anyway?”

“You won’t.”

“What if I do?”

Rey swallows. “Then I’ll use the full extent of my abilities to ensure I’m not suspected.”

“You aren’t going to give it to me.” Hux lets his lip curl into a provocatory smirk. “It isn’t worth the risk.”

“I told you it is.” Rey’s hand is curled loosely around her lightsaber. She’s quiet for a moment, and for fuck’s sake, she could just switch the thing on and end all of this. She won’t, though. For some inscrutable reason, she needs Hux too much for that. “Will you do it, Armitage?”

Hux studies the dagger. The durasteel case reflects the light, catching it in accent lines running vertically down it. The blade release is a nondescript black bump near the top. Press it and the blade will extend, glinting, sharpened to the width of a single molecule.

He’ll have two options: the heart to stop it all at the source, or the inner thigh, where he’ll bleed out efficiently--he can decide on that when he gets it.

“Yes.” Hux laces his fingers together as best he can, despite the binders. “I’ll do it.”

Rey nods once, sharply. “Good.” Her mouth twists into a sort of sad smile. “Thank you.”

“I expect you to follow through.”

“I will.” Rey clears her throat, stretches her arms briefly. “Well. Would you like to get started?”

“Now?” He didn’t come in here prepared for mental rape. Not rape. He’s consenting. But it remains a less-than-welcome intrusion.

Rey frowns. “I mean, if you’d rather not jump right into it, I can come back tomorrow.”

The knife glints between them, and Hux is struck by a sense of urgency. He considers, wracking his brain for something, anything, he could show her that wouldn’t be the equivalent of stripping naked. He draws blank upon blank--everything is too intimate.

Hux stiffens, imagines putting on body armor. “May I ask what exactly you’re looking for?”

“Like I said,” Rey explains, “pretty much anything will help.”

“I worked--” Hux starts, and manages not to falter. “--very closely with him. I need some sort of threshold for what you’re interested in.”

Rey dips her head, a concession. Her bun bobs with it. “I suppose what I’m getting at is whether there were any signs, you know, toward--” She hesitates. “--toward the end?”

“Yes,” Hux says, “of course.” His voice is cold, and he schools his expression. _Armor_ , he thinks.  (The mask is the last and most important piece.)

“So,” Rey says, seeming to summon her patience, “I’m interested in what that looked like. Was there any point when you thought, ‘this is it, he’s acting so strangely, something’s off’?”

 _The first time I caught him talking to ghosts in his sleep,_ Hux doesn’t say, _before Snoke was even gone_. _Or every time I held him because he said the Light was too strong. The worlds he abandoned, the worlds he cracked down on, techs’ corpses on the hangar floor. The incorrigible_ bad feeling _about every mission; sometimes the apathy; sometimes the rage._

One particular point? (Hardly.)

“He was,” Hux says, sharp enough to let her know she’s been unhelpful, “not a predictable person.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Rey agrees, with more vehemence than is strictly necessary. She pauses for a moment, before asking, “But was there any one point, especially as we were--or any Resistance was, really--starting to gain ground, where he made, well, a turn?”

Hux considers. He can’t show half of Ren’s ‘turns’ without giving Rey more than he ought, but he lands on a particularly nasty one.

He names the planet, not without hesitation: “Falleen.”

Rey hmms almost fondly. “Good campaign.”

“On your end,” Hux replies, blase for a moment. “It was always jarring for m-- for High Command when he was the one wanting to retreat.”

“ _He_ ordered the withdrawal from Falleen?” Rey sounds genuinely shocked, brows knit, gaze eager.

“Yes.”

Rey tilts her head again. It makes her look young and curious, the true student. “Will you show me?”

“I was on the _Finalizer_.” Hux instinctively backtracks. “I only have his explanation, not the fight itself.”

Rey waves a dismissive hand. “No, that’s perfect,” she says, and stretches a hand toward Hux’s wrist. “May I?”

He recoils, pulling as far back in his seat as possible. She clucks her tongue. “It’s easier with physical contact.”

 _Easy_ is what Hux needs from this. Besides, it’s hardly any different from the guards manhandling him, the medics sticking needles in him. In fact, it’s more equitable: a transaction, not a mandate. He forces his muscles to relax.

“And you’ll take only what I show you?” Hux verifies, still half-withdrawn.

“Start and stop as you like.”

Hux inhales, closes his eyes. “Go ahead.”

Rey touches his wrist lightly, fingertips warm on the near-constant gooseflesh there. “Breathe,” she says. Hux does.

And she presses in.

It’s vastly unlike the grenade fire of Ren breaking through his mental barriers. It’s just as strong, just as effective and inevitable, but softer somehow, like feeling heat leech back into your frostbitten hands.

Her presence flickers on the edge of the darkness behind his eyelids. It’s uncomfortable, stifling, having another mind within his own, after so long without Ren. Rey says nothing, and Hux gropes in the blackness until he finds where to begin.

.

.

Ren has a lieutenant on comms for the mission, and she's the one who relays the news to Hux.  
  
"The planet has fallen, General. The Supreme Leader has ordered our return to the fleet."  
  
Hux could ask to speak to him, but it would be futile. If Ren had wanted to have this conversation via comlink, he wouldn't have left the lieutenant on her post. That's fine. They'll have it out when he gets back to the Finalizer.  
  
Half a cycle later, word comes that the transports are docking in the hangar.  There's no excitement in Hux's step on the way down, no thrill of back-from-an-away-mission. Ren had better have something to say for himself.  
  
A heaviness hangs over Hux as he cuts through corridors to take the lift directly into the hangar. It only presses further down on him when he sees Ren. His aura - his _presence_ \- is dark, with all the deceptive calm of a hurricane's eye. Hux has known him long enough to sense icy rage radiating from him, Force or no Force.

Judging by the extra distance the troopers keep from him, though, Hux has barely missed the inferno of it. The interior of the Upsilon-class must be in tatters.  It’s a wonder the thing's still flying.  
  
Despite the warning signs, he catches Ren's eye, walks toward him at the end of the shuttle's ramp. Their chests are mere centimeters apart. He all but whispers, "How did this happen?"  
  
"We were overwhelmed."  
  
"We don't _get_ overwhelmed. _You_ don't get overwhelmed." Hux searches his face. "You should have called for reinforcements."  
  
"They would've been slaughtered."  
  
Hux lowers his voice further. "Last I checked, that's what troopers are _for_."  
  
Ren bristles. The ice over his anger seems to crack; a wisp of steam spirals up out of the faultline. "I brought eight fucking battalions down with me!" He gestures to the meager ranks filing out of the transports. "This is all that's left. What the _fuck_ should I have done? What the fuck would you have had me do!"  
  
The spike in Ren's volume has drawn a few gazes. Hux takes a step back, says stiffly, "We should speak in private, Supreme Leader."  
  
Ren nods, once. He orders one of the colonels to oversee the dissembly process, record the casualties, then follows Hux out of the hangar.  
  
Once Ren falls in step with him, Hux risks a peripheral glance at him. His face is clean, but he missed a crust of dried blood along his hairline. It's dark green. There's a fresh tear in his tunic sleeve, skin and fabric singed with the telltale of a blaster graze. A bolt got that close to him. (Bad sign.)  
  
A few silent paces more, and Hux keys them into a vacant conference room. Ren dials up the lights, without touching the dial. They sit at the far end of the table. The mounted displays on either side of the room show readouts of the Order's emblem. One behind Ren frames his head like a strange blue halo.  
  
Hux folds his hands on the tabletop. "Tell me again," he says, tone measured. "What happened?"  
  
"They had every advantage." Ren's voice is low and dangerous. His foot taps arrythmically under the table. "Numbers, terrain, surprise. I don't think there's a single Loyalist on the planet, or at least not in the capital. They were waiting for us."  
  
Hux purses his lips. "What about their weapons?"  
  
"Top of the line. Probably Resistance-provided. Same for their intel on our attack formations..." He takes a sharp breath. "Damn it to hell!" He slams his fist on the tabletop.  
  
Hux wants to slam his own fist into Ren's face. "I can't believe you let this happen." He enunciates each syllable like a barb.  
  
"There was _nothing else_ I could have done." Ren sounds defensive now, all snarling canid, all raised hackles.  
  
Hux crosses his arms, leans back in his seat. It's a comfortable pose, but meant less to defuse than to irritate. "So you couldn't just get inside the leader's head? That's what I sent you down there for."  
  
"You didn't 'send me.'"  
  
Hux doesn't have a semantics fight in him today. "Fine, that's why I _advised you to go_ . Why didn't it work?"  
  
Ren glances down at his hands, appearing to gather himself. "There was no single leader who could sway the actions of the rest. That's what I'm trying to tell you. It was the whole. damn. planet. against us. Not a single Falleen on our side."  
  
"Then why didn't you get inside all their heads?" Hux pops his lips, and that does it. Ren's gaze sparks, and there's a subsonic ripple in the air. Hux eyes the screens behind Ren, but none of them shatter.  
  
"If I could pull off mass mind control, we wouldn't be having these problems!"   
  
"Then perhaps you should start studying it."   
  
"In what spare time?" Ren shoots back.  
  
Hux exhales, shuts his eyes briefly. He's being unreasonable, and he knows it, and he can't help it. His whole life is slipping out of his hands, and Ren's just letting it go. He inhales before responding.  
  
"I don't know," Hux says, and shakes his head. He twists his lips into a sneer. "I don't know. All I know is that even when retreating you clearly didn't consider the full ramifications of your actions. I shouldn't be surprised."  
  
"Call me irrational on any other decision, fine." Ren straightens in his seat, the muscles of his throat tighten. "Not this one."  
  
"You failed to think through the symbolic consequences of losing this particular planet. Our reputation couldn't afford to lose Falleen.”  
  
Ren is quiet for a moment, tips his head to one side inscrutably. "Sometimes you're unbelievably arrogant."  
  
"You're unbelievably ignorant," Hux retorts, without qualification. "Falleen was our last Mid-Rim territory. Do you have any idea what that means?"  
  
"We're back where we started," Ren says. "In Wild Space."  
  
"And you're just fine with that, apparently."  
  
Ren runs a still-gloved hand through his air. "We'll get it all back." 

 _Good gods._ He’s so stupid when he plays the optimist.

"How, Ren? When?” Hux steeples his fingers. “Enlighten me, please."  
  
"At some point their new government will fail. Then we’ll make our move."  
  
"Yes, after a decade, when they get sick of anarchy. Provided we haven't been captured or killed, and have retained our resources. Terrific wager, that."  
  
Ren's tone simmers. "We'd be a lot fucking closer to running out of resources if I'd stayed and tried to win down there."  
  
Ren doesn't get it. He doesn't get it, though he should. He's never been one for strategic analysis, but the implications here should be intuitive. Still, it must be that he doesn't get it. (The alternative-- _that he doesn't care_ \--is too terrifying to consider.)

"We _needed_ that foothold!" Hux insists. "It's worth the expenditure."  
  
Ren stiffens, but leans forward slightly in his seat, as if he’s trying to loom over Hux. "I'll decide what's worth the expenditure, _Grand Marshal_."  
  
"Now you’re pulling rank on me," Hux observes, nonplussed. "That's hilarious."  
  
"I can pull rank whenever the fuck I want.” Under the table, Ren’s foot has stopped bouncing. “I could relieve you of command if this insubordination keeps up."  
  
Hux would hardly call justified after-action criticism insubordination, but he skips to the point. "What are you going to do, punish me with extended shore leave?" He has the wherewithal not to add, to scarcely even think, _'Then come back down the next day, whining to be fucked.'_  
  
"I can do as I like with you," Ren says, almost fiercely. He holds up a finger and thumb; he doesn't pinch them, but it's a warning shot.  
  
Still, Hux's throat constricts slightly, pulse racing on the adrenaline of memory, and he finds himself short of breath. He imagines invisible fingers on his neck, the world graying at the edges.  
  
"Brilliant, Ren." His voice is embarrassingly unsteady. "This will really help my opinion of your judgment."  
  
Ren's eyes narrow, but the Force releases Hux's throat. "Don't think for one second you can question everything I do just because I--"  
  
_No_. Fuck.

.

.

Hux diverts the memory just in time, recalled to himself by the chill of the binders against his wrists.

 _Just because I love you._ Ren had a bad habit of blurting it out in the middle of arguments, not as a confession or winning card, simply a mutually accepted fact. Hux could only think of twice he'd said it outside a fit of some sort, during one of which he was delirious, which effectively nullified it.  
  
He'd say it almost with bitterness, vitriol, as if it were the whole reason he was angry. Unaware he was weaponizing it. Nonetheless, it chipped at Hux's defenses every time it escaped his lips.  
  
Countermeasure: Hux, for his part, had a bad habit of never returning it.  
  
"Why did you stop?" Rey says. "What was he going to say- did he say?" she corrects herself.  
  
"Nothing of use," Hux returns. "It devolves into petty insults from there."  
  
Rey eyes him keenly, then her posture slackens, and she appears to accept he's telling the truth.

He is. After a few rounds of 'impulsive fool,' 'coward,' 'stubborn idiot,' and their equivalents, Hux had announced he was going to bed, and Ren had said he'd take over the bridge. Hux had been so put out he'd allowed it. _Let him remember how much he needs me._

When Hux emerged early next cycle, Ren had shoved a mug of tea into Hux’s hand, with his go-to commentary on Tarine: _"This stuff smells fucking terrible."_

Hux had rolled his eyes and bitten back his usual retort ( _"I don't see it stopping you from kissing me"_ ). He had bumped Ren's shoulder as he walked past him. But he had taken the tea.  
  
At least he had taken the damn tea, had let the fight rest. Some part of him had known it was the beginning of the end.  
  
"There's still more," Rey observes.  
  
_Not that you're getting._ It's a bit ridiculous to keep the truth about himself and Ren from her. With her pilfering through his memories, it's only a matter of time before he accidentally shows her something indiscreet, but Hux can't bring himself to break their confidence. No one had ever known, or at least not because they’d been told directly.

In another form of government, it would have perhaps been beneficial to 'go public' - a morale booster for the war-fogged masses. They’d briefly entertained it once or twice, but let it go as a joke or fantasy. The Order required no such cult of personality--no celebrity rulers here.  
  
Besides, Ren was even more deeply private a leader than Snoke. He'd never said so, but Hux imagined he didn't want his family privy to his face or his personal life.  
  
More importantly, however, a public announcement would have cut off Hux's means of escape. Trapped in the shell of a dead relationship, putting on a show for the crowds, unable to end it without an outcry - Brendol and Maratelle. Hux didn't want that. Not with someone as unpredictable, as dangerous, as Ren.  
  
It doesn't matter anymore, of course. Ren's gone, and _nothing_ matters, full stop. Hux likes the secret, though. It's the only thing left between  them.  
  
“Nothing of use,” Hux repeats. He realizes his voice is shaking.

“So his abilities to influence individuals started failing him once the revolutions got going,” Rey summarizes. If she’d brought a datapad, Hux could imagine her jotting it down.

“I suppose,” Hux agrees.

“And he suddenly started caring about stormtrooper casualties,” Rey continues, with the same clinical air. “And he let a planet have its independence.”

Hux’s stomach clenches. That sick, hollow feeling has returned, and he babbles a reply on instinct, defensive before he can process why. “It wasn’t like that. He never-- It wasn’t that simple.”

“I figured that much.” Rey drums her fingers on the table, two lonely taps, then coda. “Lots of gaps to fill, I know.”

Hux sighs, swallows. “What else would you care to see?” He manages to steady his voice somewhat.

But not enough. Something in Rey’s glance softens. She frowns briefly down at her hands, then looks back up. “That was plenty for today, don’t you think?”

Without waiting for Hux’s assent, she rises and goes to comm the guards.

* * *

Hux dreams tonight, for the first time since before they lost Falleen and everything went slowly to hell. He dreams of Ren, because what else is there.

_His hands are in Ren’s hair, fisted till his knuckles go white. Ren’s tongue traces starlines up his inner thighs, while he just grows harder. It’s hell, Ren tantalizing him like this, avoiding his erection in favor of the soft skin below it, so pale it’s shot with veins._

_“For fuck’s sake, Ren--” He all but gasps it, voice hitching as he can’t stifle a moan. “Just--” Heat flares in the pit of his stomach._

_Ren tips his face up, mouth twitching, eyes bright. “Just what?” Before Hux can answer, his head is back down, and he’s kissing the skin, no more tongue, pressing his perfect lips against the horrible webbed veins like an act of veneration._

_“Ren, I can’t--”_

_Ren doesn’t look all the way up, just lifts his mouth from the skin and breathes onto it, “Ask for it.”_

_“Ren,_ now _.” Hux tugs his hair, and Ren winces._

_“Ask, or you’re gonna come before I’ve even started.”_

_“Fuck you.”_

_Ren doesn’t respond, just keeps kissing. His mouth is hot, and Hux can imagine it leaving black imprints behind, like a brand. The pressure of it is too much, he’s only moving higher, and his hair is brushing the skin, which feels impossibly electric. Hux has a perfect view of the knotted scars on Ren’s collarbone, and at this rate he’s going to come in his hair--which Ren deserves--but would ruin the softness of it, and his mouth is hot, and_ fuck--

_“Please.”_

_Ren takes him to the base. Stars erupt behind his eyelids._

And dissolve into darkness.

He wakes up murmuring Ren’s name at the ceiling panels. He’s hard, heavy and aching with it. It’s hot in here, and he’s sweating under the standard-issue bedding. He flings off the synth-wool blanket, leaving only the topsheet. In the corridor outside, the dimmed lampdisks hum quietly; they throw a gray shaft of light into the cell.  
  
_Fucking hell_ , he thinks in Ren’s general direction, _three months dead and you’re still turning me on._  
  
Nothing. No response. Just his own words pinging back and forth in his head like a bad transmission. Delivery failed. (What else was he expecting.)  
  
Hux turns over, tosses until he’s staring at the ceiling again. He can feel his pulse in his groin. His fingers toy with his waistband, but he can’t bring himself to reach further down and take care of this.  
  
What’s he supposed to do, jerk off to memories? And he can’t think of Ren, not like this, not awake and sober and _needing_.  
  
_I miss you_ , he thinks, futilely, and is immediately disgusted with himself.

Because he’s hard as hell on his _prison cot_ at zero dark thirty.

Because there isn’t a thing he can do about it that wouldn’t leave him in tears, hopelessly unsatisfied.

Because right now he isn’t missing Ren’s combat savvy, or his sarcasm, or the amused twitch of his lip, or his rare, quiet laugh. He just wants to fuck Ren into the mattress, and what kind of shallow consort-thing does that make him. Horny and depressed, pouting that his lover’s too dead for sex.  
  
This is absurd. It’s ridiculous and humiliating, all of it. He clenches his eyes shut and forces his hands to his sides. He breathes deeply for several minutes, until his mind is blank, and the pressure between his thighs has begun to ease. He drifts back into an uneasy sleep, dreamless, but shot through with an indistinct tinnitus, a faint note thrumming through his skull.

It lingers behind his eyes like a migraine when he wakes. For the foggy moments until it disappears, he blames Ren.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: Hux recalls severely restricting his food intake in recent weeks | Hux has multiple intrusive thoughts regarding different ways he could have/still could die | Rey offers Hux a suicide weapon in exchange for information, though she (spoiler) doesn't intend to follow through | Kylo Ren's suicide (about three months prior) is referenced | Ren implicitly threatens non-consensual choking, but it doesn't happen
> 
> Title borrowed from Ariel's Song in _The Tempest_
> 
> Updates will be on Saturdays


	2. What You Take with You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, see endnotes for content warnings!

“There was a funeral?” Hux doesn’t ever blurt, on principle, but he left the last of his etiquette on the husk of the Finalizer, and Rey has just said the impossible.

Late the next morning, after a breakfast of some kind of instant gruel and canned citrus slices in heavy syrup, then page 23 of Hux's flimsipad, the guards returned rather sooner than expected, announcing an unnamed visitor, he’s sitting across from her again, under the humming lampdisk.

Rey made an attempt at small talk for a change--thanking Hux for his assistance, et cetera--but made the mistake of referring to the timeline of her efforts _since_ , well, since the ceremony in question.  
  
“Yes...” she replies, sounding uncertain. “Of course there was.”   
  
Hux could be sick. The room reels, Rey’s face blurring against the walls. The lampdisk is suddenly loud enough to break worlds, and Hux feels the sharp edge where every one of his bones touches the plast of the chair. Rey’s implication is nauseating.

He’s assumed, over the past few months, whenever he lets his mind wander so far, that they must have examined Ren long enough to determine his cause of death, then cremated him in industrial fashion, possibly aboard the ship. The thought always sickens Hux like this, and he dismisses it as soon as possible.

Rey, however, is forcing him to dwell on it, pick it apart, and realize the Resistance would allow no such thing. He has to know.

“What- what was done with him? I mean.” Hux swallows, flushing at the sound of his own stammering. _Why did you say that, she’s going to_ know- But he’s in too deep now. He excises any fondness and rephrases: “What was done with the body. How was it disposed of?”   
  
Rey’s response is slow and half-wary. _She’s suspicious, she’s suspicious, you’re making her_ suspicious _, and she doesn’t deserve to know._

“Cremated,” she’s saying, and she might mean the business-like practice Hux imagined. “It’s common practice with Force-users. Releases the soul and all that.”  
  
“I know it’s common practice,” Hux says. The shriveled husk of Vader’s helmet flashes into his mind’s eye. (Ren has nothing so permanent left.) He doesn’t ask what became of the relic.   
  
"It was a private ceremony, just family," Rey volunteers, tone distant. Maybe she’s less engaged than Hux imagined. "Which is also customary."   
  
Hux bites back an argument about how to define Ren’s family. He knows who Rey means. "Organa did it all by herself?"   
  
"With a few close friends."   
  
"So the entire Resistance leadership, I'm sure." Hux pops his lips, since both tears and a profane tirade are unseemly. Sarcasm is less so. "Was there champagne?"   
  
Rey squints at him, looks almost repulsed. "I understand you're not familiar with the concept of compassion,” she says, “but no. We were there for Leia."   
  
Hux lets the barb drop. Any retort he could offer might give him away. Besides, right now he needs information, for Ren’s sake, not an ethics debate. "And afterward," he says, "what was done with the... the--" His throat tightens, eyes prickle.   
  
"The ashes?"   
  
Hux can only nod.   
  
"Leia has them." Rey shrugs, a silent but-of-course. It’s too much.   
  
Hux bites out a curse, with venom. It loses some of the intended effect, as his lips are trembling. “She doesn’t deserve--” He stops himself in time.   
  
“You have no idea what she’s been through,” Rey says, something fierce in her tone, something of the dauntless urchin who might have made one hell of a Stormtrooper. “She should at least get this. Some kind of closure. It’s a testament to her that she even wants them.”   
  
“Finally got her son back, after all.” Hux curls his mouth, and hopes the sneer is vitriolic, not watery.   
  
“She loved him,” Rey says, “despite all of it. She still loves him. If that’s the most she can have of him, she _more_ than deserves it.”   
  
Hux stills his lips for a moment longer, and his reply comes out gratifyingly cold. “That’s absolutely pathetic,” he says, and isn’t just talking about Organa.   
  
Rey’s eyes flash. She leans forward as if she’s about to make a scathing retort, but her expression softens before she can open her mouth, anger replaced by something akin to curiosity. She sits back in her chair again. “Why does it matter to you?” 

_Fuck_ . He’s caught.   
  
Maybe.   
  
“Because he was my...comrade.” The word sounds absurd in Hux’s own ears, like something out of Republic propaganda, mocking language neither the Empire nor the Order had even employed. Still, it’s the most he can say. Anything more is the furthest possible thing from Rey’s business.

“Regardless of our personal feelings, Ren was on my side,” he says, and means _was mine_. "Can't I be offended on the Order’s behalf?”   
  
“Mm,” says Rey. She’s got that patronizing _jotting-this-down_ expression again. She sits quietly before changing the subject. “I was meaning to tell you that what you showed me yesterday helped quite a lot.

“Good,” Hux says, brittle in his own ears.

“Do you have anything else that’s like it?” Rey asks.

“Unfortunately.” The Order’s was a long and arduous fall. Hux has too many memories of the kind.

“Any I might find interesting?”

Hux hesitates, culling the onslaught of painful recollections to a few choice incidents that will neither betray the nature of his and Ren’s relationship, nor replicate yesterday’s fare too closely. He tries to tamp down his automatic inclination--a return to the Order’s peak, months ahead of the loss of Falleen--but no avail. Rey is interested in this sort of thing: the specter of Ben rearing its sad head.

“Yes,” Hux says, and uncurls his fingers, as if opening up the whole of him.

Rey reaches across the table and plants two callused fingertips on the outside of Hux’s wrist, and he closes his eyes.  
.

.

“Supreme Leader,” Hux says, dragging his gaze toward the head of the table to meet Ren’s, “do you have any questions regarding Coruscant’s viability as a permanent capital?”

“I do not.”

“Very well.” Hux sighs, then gestures to the briefer once he realizes Ren isn’t going to express interest in her next point. “Proceed.”

The colonel giving the presentation--Bolander--nods her acquiescence, then taps at her datapad. The image of a smaller, greener planet than Coruscant appears on the holoscreen behind her, mirroring the slides on her datapad. _Chandrila_ reads the heading above the image, and the box of demographic stats beside it. The planet itself is all turquoise oceans hugging the jade-green of continents. Minuscule ice caps dot the world’s poles, a sort of punctuation for the lush look of the rest of the planet.

It’s every cubic centimeter a Republic world--almost absurdly soft--and it needs to be next. Hux risks a glance from the screen to Ren as Bolander delivers the bottom line of this portion of the assessment.

Of course, Ren doesn’t share Hux’s interest. He would hardly be less present if he were watching from the corridor, squinting at the screen through frosted transparisteel, rendered deaf by the soundproof paneling. His dark eyes are transfixed on the dark sliver of space visible beside the screen, which lowers in front of the viewport for briefings.

A few stars poke through the narrow strip of sky, the tail-ends of constellations. The holoscreen’s black background bleeds into the darkness beside it, creating the impression that Chandrila itself is hanging in front of them in miniature, most of the stars around it snuffed out. Ren doesn’t seem to regard it at all.

Hux grips the edge of his own datapad, lying facedown on the conference table between his elbows, to keep from rubbing his temples. He isn’t sure why he was expecting Ren to engage with this presentation.

Weeks ago, he’d tasked a team of the Order’s best strategic analysts with assessing the optimal location for a planetside capital. With nearly ninety percent of the galaxy occupied, it’s about time the Order starts acting more like a stable government than a mobile junta. He’s mentioned the notion to Ren offhand two or three times, always in private, and received more or less positive impressions. He took that as enough interest to commission a study on his own. It was a bold move, certainly, but he’d expected anything from Ren besides this-- _disinterest_.

Ren’s said nothing since the beginning of the meeting, when he defensively acknowledged that he hadn’t yet _“had the opportunity to review the report in-depth, Grand Marshal.”_ The only sign he’s shown for the first twenty minutes of the briefing has been the slight shift in his vacant stare when Chandrila appeared on-screen. He was looking right at Coruscant, through it, but with Chandrila, he’d rather look past and around it.

“As with the other worlds we assessed,” Bolander says, lowering her datapad to her side, “Chandrila’s Core location makes it a competitive option for a permanent seat of government. Unlike Coruscant, however, it offers a moderate climate and a more approachable public image than does the ecumenopolis. Moreover, it has political history, but--naturally--none of the Imperial associations tied to Coruscant.”

The colonel pauses and raises her datapad, flicking forward to an image of Hanna City’s skyline. The bronzed and silvered spires of cloudcutters jut into a violet sky; distant white-capped mountains conceal the horizon behind. In Hux’s periphery, Ren flinches.

The colonel clears her throat and continues: “My team presents Chandrila as a second option only because we felt it would be prudent to acknowledge Coruscant as a natural but suboptimal first choice. While we cannot technically advocate for one option over another, it merited leading scores in our points-based assessment of environmental, economic, and political factors, as well as public image, given the Republic legacy--”

“Colonel.” Ren stirs, and his baritone is low and dangerous. “Your assessment neglects a crucial detail.” Finally, Ren turns from the viewport, entirely focused on Bolander, and the holoscreen behind her. He pops his lips. “Chandrila isn’t Order territory.”

And that’s the crux of it, of course. That’s why Hux may or may not have subtly endorsed their findings on Chandrila, greenlighted some bias toward it in the assessment. It’s the last independent Core World. The Order needs it.

“Correct, sir,” the colonel says, dipping her head. “However, our assessment weighs the pros of invasion and occupation against--”

Ren cuts her off, unmistakable heat building in his tone. “You intend to advise a full-scale invasion of Chandrila, just to make a statement?”

“Respectfully, Supreme Leader,” Bolander starts, “it would serve as--”

“A staggering misallocation of human resources?”

Ren’s sharpness unseats the colonel, and her fingers work on the sides of her datapad, knuckles blanching. “Again with respect, sir, I understand your concerns. However, a tactical assessment falls outside the scope of our--” She breaks off mid-word with a strangled gasp, free left hand scrabbling at her throat. Beside Hux, Ren’s hand is extended, gloved index and middle fingers curled in toward his thumb.

“Then perhaps you should have expanded your scope,” Ren says, coolly, but without letting go.

The other analysts, seated around the edges of the room, shuffle in their chairs. Those in Hux’s line of sight glance down; a few of them blanch. Fucking hell, it wasn’t supposed to go like this.

“ _Supreme Leader_ ,” Hux murmurs, a gentle but risky admonishment. He cautiously reaches for Ren’s forearm.

Ren relaxes under his touch, and Hux withdraws his hand as Ren’s own falls to the table, releasing the colonel’s throat. She coughs into one hand, uses the other in a feeble attempt to cover the blotchiness of her complexion. Hux can sympathize. At least for him it didn’t happen in public, in the middle of a briefing. As Ren sits back, himself recovering, Hux covers for her.

“Supreme Leader,” he repeats, and it’s all he can do to stay seated, not stand up, clasp his hands behind his back, pace like a caged animal in the briefing style he hasn’t had to employ in years. He laces his fingers on the tabletop instead. “Allow me to offer a _strategic_ assessment of a potential campaign on Chandrila.

It takes a pause just barely long enough to be uncomfortable before Ren waves his hand and tells Hux to go ahead.

Hux turns it on. “As the final Core World outside Order control, Chandrila is an absolutely critical acquisition. As long as it remains independent, we face an ideological threat from the mere fact that it has held out so long. If the Order has turned a blind eye to it because it cannot directly threaten us, other worlds will get the idea that pacifism can protect them.”

Ren purses his lips for a moment, then turns to Hux, controlled. “You want to invade a pacifist world, waste resources on that, when we’ve still got rebels killing our people on the planets we already have.” Ren states it where he should question.

“Our _people_ ,” Hux bites out, “are handling it. You’ve ended the largest revolts yourself. What’s left is a handful of saboteurs, not a proper rebellion, on any world. We can’t focus on skirmishes when we could win the war.”

“The skirmishes show how far we are from winning.”

“There are always going to be terrorists, R- Supreme Leader,” Hux corrects himself for the onlookers’ benefit, anger cracking his professional veneer. “But they’re under control--we can’t let them prevent us from expanding, that’s what they want. We can’t hope to wipe them out entirely.”

Ren’s bristling again, and Hux is acutely aware he’s playing with fire. “That shouldn’t prevent us from trying.” Ren doesn’t raise his voice, but he’s speaking through his teeth, syllables taut, a warning sign. “As long as we let them exist, they can fight a war of attrition. They’ll keep making us hurt.”

“But as long as Chandrila stands, they’ll have something to cling to. We have to take that--” Hux falters, and lands on the wrong term. “--hope..”

“By creating a new conflict and pouring all our resources into winning it,” Ren supplies, sardonic. He pauses for a moment before continuing, softer now, almost belabored. “If you think just because they’re pacifists, they won’t put up a fight, you’re wrong. I’ve--” He comes to a brief, breathless stop. “--known Chandrilans. Even if we win with an air campaign, they’ll give us hell once we’re on the ground.”

He lost Hux at _known Chandrilans_ . Oh. _Oh._ Of course Ren and his Force might object to an invasion of his homeworld. Of course he’d be too sentimental, too uncommitted, to see past it to the benefits.

Hux hopes he’s wrong, but experiments anyway. “So we’ll bomb them to rubble. We don’t have to leave anyone to fight us, as long as we can rebuild on the ashes.” He hums, warming to the idea on its own merit. “In fact, it might be a stronger statement that way. Maximum casualties.”

Ren’s lips contort with the strain of suppressed emotion. His hands tighten on the arms of his chair, the leather of his gloves creaking at the seams. “Unnecessary,” he all but snarls. “Especially when we have urgent battles on hand.”

Hux swallows, ensuring he doesn’t return Ren’s heat. He can’t sink to his level, not in front of an audience. Still, he can’t hold back a barb. “Supreme Leader, if you could think beyond the tactical for one moment--”

Ren interrupts before he can finish, pushes back his chair, and stands. “There will be no occupation of Chandrila.” He still isn’t loud, but there’s thunder in it nonetheless. He turns to Hux. “Grand Marshal, double the garrisons on Falleen, Rodia, and Mon Cala. I want those insurgents eradicated by next week.” With that, he leaves the table and the room, black mantle billowing behind him like the wake of a storm.

An uncomfortable silence falls as the doors iris shut behind him. The analysts shift in their seats. Bolander, more or less recovered, checks her datapad. Hux blinks and clears his throat, unfolding his hands.

“Dismissed,” he says, curt. “Excuse me.” He gets up from the table and follows Ren into the corridor.

It’s humiliating that he has to nearly jog to catch up with Ren’s long strides, but he can’t just let this go. He grabs Ren’s arm as soon as he’s in step with him--bold and dangerous, but somehow necessary. Ren’s muscles tense in his grip, then relax, just slightly, once he turns to face Hux, stopping with his back to a wall.

“What?” he snaps, eyes flashing. “You heard my fucking orders.”  


“So I did,” Hux says, with vitriol. “Sentiment got the better of you? Again?” He thinks of Organa’s continued existence, how many chances Ren has to have had with the Jedi Rey.

Ren straightens as if to overshadow Hux, with all five centimeters he has on him. Still, it nearly works. “I ordered you to annihilate three terrorist factions. What the _fuck_ are you talking about.”

“Chandrila.” Hux drops his hand, but takes a step toward Ren. “Don’t think for a moment I don’t know why you’re refusing.”

Ren’s nostrils flare. “Because I care about our people still getting bombed and shot at on half the worlds we occupy? Unlike you?”

It’s the lowest possible blow, even if it’s mostly true. Hux recoils, as if struck, and balls his fists at his sides to keep from physical retaliation. He’s wearing his gloves, so he digs his nails into the tips of them. If he weren’t, the heels of his hands would be coated in crescents.

“Unlike me?” Hux echoes. He catches himself going shrill, and hates it, and can’t prevent it. “I’m trying to end the damn war, Ren. You, on the other hand--you’d keep the little fights going forever, wouldn’t you?” He holds Ren’s gaze and adds, almost as an afterthought, “I suppose they’re all you can manage.”

Ren’s eyes spark, and an invisible wave radiates out from him, out of his control. Hux staggers backward with the force of it, but Ren steps forward, backing Hux against the wall. “You have no **idea** what my real fights are like! You have no fucking idea,” he repeats, cooling slightly from the outburst. “At least I’m not so blindly arrogant I pick fresh fights before I’ve won the ones I’m in.”

“‘ _Arrogant_ ,’” Hux says, and pops his lips, sarcastic. His pulse is up, and he isn’t sure if it’s from anger or fear. “Here I am, trying to establish your rule, score the last territory that will make you a fucking emperor, and I’m _arrogant_. This is for you, Ren. Don’t forget that.”

“Oh yes,” Ren shoots back, sardonic as Hux. “Because you _of course_ have no ambitions of your own.” He pauses, eyes narrowing. “You know I see right through you.”

Hux inhales, clears his throat. “Are you questioning my loyalty?” he asks, dignified.

“I am,” Ren says, “given that you’re defying direct orders.”

“Given that they are illogical and absurd orders--”

“They are _orders_ ,” Ren cuts him off. “Follow them or be removed.”

It’s an empty threat, of course, so absurd that Hux can come up with no intelligent response to it. Ren gives him no chance to, anyway, abruptly turning back in the direction from which they came. The gyms are that way--hopefully they’re unoccupied, as Ren’s fingers are already itching toward his lightsaber.

Hux fumes for a moment before continuing toward the bridge. As he walks, he reflects that Ren shouldn’t have brought up his _ambitions_. He hardly hears Mitaka’s status update once he arrives, then paces over to the viewport, clasping his hands behind his back.

He spends the next eight hours largely disengaged, turning Ren’s shortsightedness, Ren’s temper, Ren’s sentiments and his clearly compromised loyalties, over and over in his mind. Between intel briefings, supply invoices, and an update on the latest TIE shipment from Kuat-Entralla, he considers a dozen ways Ren could die aboard this ship. A dozen cover-ups and explanations.

He imagines clutching his command cap at his side--like after Brendol’s sudden demise--and delivering a eulogy that would make himself look better than Ren ever was. It would be easy. It would be _justified._ There’s a twisted sort of comfort in picturing the details of each plan, working out its kinks and loopholes.

It’s a coping mechanism, he supposes, even in the event none of these ideas is ever executed. His fury freezes over into something coldly frustrated--with Ren’s incompetence, his irrationality, his ingratitude.

Hux lets himself go no further--Rey doesn’t need to see how it turned out. She can’t, without witnessing infinitely more vulnerability than she deserves to.

.

.

The memory dissolves, and Rey lifts the warm weight of her hand from Hux’s wrist. “You didn’t do it,” she says, once they’ve both opened their eyes. She turns her lightsaber over on the table with a dull clank, but doesn’t tear her gaze from Hux’s.

Hux blinks several times in succession. The walls of the room seem insubstantial, alternately convex and concave, undulating every second. It’s far brighter in here than on the _Finalizer_ . Which he _wasn’t_ on just now, no matter how his senses denied it.

He used to think Ren was the only one who could turn the vast gray filing cabinet of his brain into an interesting place. Now it looks like it’s just a Force thing.

“Armitage?”

Hux doesn’t respond, the room still acquiring its equilibrium.

“You cut off again,” she continues.

“I have to stop them somewhere.” It’s perfectly true, and Rey’s none the wiser about what was left out.

“Well yes,” Rey replies, tilting her head, “but it felt a bit...incomplete.”

Then it’ll fit nicely at the bottom of Hux’s list of unfinished things.

“We settled it,” is what he says.

“Without your actually trying to murder him, I assume?”

“Yes, seeing as I lived to tell the tale.”

Rey ignores him. “So why didn’t you?”  
  
“I beg your pardon?” Hux says, stalling.   
  
“What stopped you from doing it?” Rey rephrases, brow furrowing. “Or at least from trying. You had it all planned out. You could’ve at least tried. I mean, you might have gotten yourself killed in the process, but I’m surprised you didn’t, since you thought he was as bad as all that.”   
  
“He was,” Hux scoffs, shooting for nonchalance as his stomach knots. It isn’t as if he’s tempted to tell the truth, but it seems wrong not to, like an injustice to both Ren and himself. But _because I loved him_ is far too intimate an answer, though, and moreover, it isn’t entirely true.   
  
Hux settles on something that is. “I need-- _the Order_ needed a Force user. We had to fight you somehow. Not that he did enough good on that front either, I’m afraid. But there was no one else who even understood that sort of warfare. He had a purpose.”   
  
Rey nods, appearing to accept this. Then she resumes the interrogation. “But did you consider it often?”   
  
“Consider what? Assassination?” Hux tries to scoff, dreading this topic. It was an idiotic move to show her the latter part of the memory--there’s too much shame involved, where this leads.   
  
“More or less.” Rey holds his gaze. “Taking over, all that.”   
  
Hux bites his lip, teeth work into the dry skin. _Anything but this_. His voice comes out thin and tremulous. “What does that possibly have to do with the Force?”

Rey looks down, inhales slowly. “I had the chance to do it myself,” she says. “On the Supremacy, after Snoke died. We both collapsed, and I woke up first.” She picks at the folds of her arm bands, twisting the tight fabric around her fingers. She sounds far away.

“The room’s burning down around us, the red curtain’s in cinders, and there’s Crait out the viewport, this little white beacon.” For some reason, her breath hitches.  “And then there’s Kylo on the floor in front of me, and my lightsaber’s broken, but his is right beside him, and I mean-” She purses her lips. “It crossed my mind.”   
  
“Just ending the war right there.” Hux should be calling her a string of obscenities, should tell her she’s weak and unprincipled for not doing it, should say she couldn’t kill Ren if she tried. He can’t. (If there’s one thing he’s not, it’s a hypocrite.) He lets his clarification hang.  
  
“Yeah,” Rey says. Hux can hear cracks in her voice. “But I couldn’t do it.”   
  
"You couldn't," Hux parrots, affecting disinterest. She continues anyway.   
  
“I was- I was so deep in the Force that day, it was like I could see a dozen different realities, all sprawled out in front of me like a holotank, whenever I looked at him.” (Hux tries not to let that sting.) “It wasn’t my place to rule all of them out.”   
  
Hux bites back _thank you_ . (For letting him achieve the goal, if only for a little while. For letting the game go on. For one last year with _him_ .)   
  
“I suppose you regretted that,” is what he says.   
  
"Seeing what it came to." Rey studies her fingernails; they glint under the lampdisk. "I mean, I did see _this_ reality, then. I just didn't think it would actually..."   
  
Hux lets her trail off for a moment, unsure how any of this answers his question. She’s speaking so quickly - yet in such a stilted manner - that he can imagine she’s never had the chance to discuss this before. Maybe that’s what this whole arrangement is about: an excuse for her to vent to someone whose opinion of her can’t be changed for the worse.   
  
"I thought there were so many other ways it could go,” Rey’s saying. “As long as there was one scenario where he made the right choice and came back, I wasn't going to kill him."   
  
"At least in this one you won."   
  
"But I didn’t anticipate it."

Hux brows pinch. “Winning?”

“This.” Rey plucks at her armband again, without breaking eye contact, and must mean the saber through Ren’s chest. “That’s why I’m talking to you. So next time, Force permitting, I can see it coming.”  
  
Hux nods. A hollow feeling spreads in the pit of his stomach. After several heartbeats of silence, because this is almost the kind of information she's looking for, he volunteers, "I considered it, too."   
  
"Killing him?" Rey says. “So you showed me.”   
  
"That day,” Hux amends, and inhales. _You shouldn’t say this._ But one push further, and she can see it anyway. He keeps going. “I had my blaster. For a moment I thought it would make things easier. Consolidate command."   
  
"You would've just lost that much sooner without a Force-user."   
  
"I know." Hux scrabbles at a hangnail on his thumb. "In hindsight I should have-" He stops himself before anything about murder-suicide can tumble out. He shouldn’t have started this. It aches like a phantom limb.   
  
Rey looks up, probes his face with that calm, studious expression. "Do you want to show me?"   
  
"There's nothing about the Force," Hux backtracks. _Just me and my bad calculus._   
  
The rational part of him--the cadet who seldom lost a war game--hates that he didn't also anticipate this end, take that shot and then another. But the rest of him will never forgive himself the intention. Now, this side of hell, Ren's life is infinitely precious. It's unspeakable that he'd wanted to throw it away.   
  
"There's always the Force," Rey insists. "Even in your memories, I can feel it."

Hux swallows. “Very well.”  
.

.

The lift doors shudder apart to reveal the throne room as it should be.

Hux had been shocked once, upon on a read-through of the _Supremacy’_ s schematics, to learn that the chamber was originally designed as an observatory. Domed ceiling, wraparound viewports--it was supposed to allow for a near total view of the surrounding starscape, as well as the ship’s trajectory. It should have been like this. It should have been breathtaking

Somewhere along the way, however, Snoke had blocked the panorama with those gaudy, claustrophobic red curtains. The vastness of space was competition--he liked to be the most unfathomable thing in the room.

Right now, however, he’s anything but. His dramatic backdrop is in burning tatters. His corpse is sprawled across the dais.

His corpse.

A voice in Hux’s head is yelling _celebrate_ , but confusion--and the putrid, charcoal stench of seared xeno flesh--stifle what ought to be delight. This didn’t happen in the collision: the burnmarks and the odor confirm it. _Then what--_

Hux looks up, realizes he’s walked several steps forward, halfway to the side of the throne. His gaze runs the floor in front of him, surveying the armored bodies of Praetorian guards, the clumps of burning fabric. Less than two meters from his feet lies Ren.

He’s curled on his side, legs twisted underneath him like he’s one more dead thing. His hair fans around his neck. Hux takes a single step closer. Ren’s chest is rising and falling.

Something releases in Hux’s own chest before he can reprimand it. Ren’s alive. _Ren is alive, and Snoke is dead._ Ren must have managed it, somehow, before the collision.

There’s no sign of the girl, but there’s no way she did it and fled. She isn’t strong enough, and Snoke would have been particularly guarded against her ( _conveniently distracted_ , Hux assesses).

Besides, she left Ren alive. She wouldn’t have (couldn’t have) eliminated one hostile but not the other. Something must have knocked Ren down after the impact, and Rey probably panicked, ran while she could.

The Praetorians are a different matter--Ren probably went after them, too. Hux knows little about their training, but surely Ren could take them. _It’s_ all _he’s good for, after all._ The reminder shakes Hux out of his analysis.

Ren’s breathing is deep and steady, full lips slightly parted. In Hux’s brain, _Good for him_ wars with _It should have been both of us,_ wars with _It should have been me--_ and is utterly decimated, blown to stardust, by the sudden, cold realization: _It could still be me._

His blaster is heavy under his greatcoat. This is it. He’s worked his whole life for this.

It’ll be easy. Afterward, he’ll put his cap in his hand and address the Order--the galaxy now, there’s little difference. _Oxygen failure in the Supreme Leader’s audience chamber_ , he’ll say. _No survivors._ His voice will be even and sure. _Tragic loss,_ he’ll say. _We must carry on._

The blaster is heavy. Ren’s chest rises and falls.

_Fuck._ It must be the scar that makes him look so fragile-- _but none of that._ The man is a damn hurricane, and here is Hux, for once in the eye of the storm.

Something clenches in his stomach, but he wills it gone. _Ren._ Hux shouldn’t-- _that’s_ _bantha shit._

Even now, Ren will just be miserable if he lives. Ren is always miserable. It’s a victory for them both, really (even if Hux is the main beneficiary).

The blaster is heavy, liable to pull him to the floor.

Hux inhales. He’s worked his whole life for this, and the universe has tossed it into his lap. His hand strays inside his coat, toward the weapon at his hip.

Then Ren gasps awake, a sharp, shuddering inhale. His ridiculous eyelashes quiver as his eyelids flutter open. Hux drops his hand before Ren’s looked up.

Hux says nothing while Ren staggers to his feet. The floor trembles with a feeble blast from the ship’s dying thrusters, decks below. Ren appraises the room, teeth working over his bottom lip. When he meets Hux’s eyes, his expression blurs the faint line between vulnerable and confused. Hux isn’t sure which is worse.

.

.

Hux pulls back before matters can deteriorate. Rey lifts her hand, and he stares at the spot on his wrist where it was. “There you have it,” he says, then looks up.

  
Rey's brows knit together.  "What happened after that?"   
  
"We updated each other, on you and on the ship. Then we argued about battle tactics." It isn't a lie, and Rey doesn't seem to sense the omission.   
  
She sits pondering for a moment, and then: "He reacted to that...much differently than I'd have imagined."   
  
"To what?"   
  
"The stirring in the Force when your finger was near the trigger. What woke him up," Rey says dismissively, as if this is a known fact. "You weren't just _considering_ doing it."   
  
Hux ignores the accusation. There's a faint ringing in his ears. This is impossible. "You- are you saying- I mean-” _Don’t stammer, get it together._ “You mean to tell me that he knew?"   
  
"Yeah, obviously."   
  
"He- he never told me."   
  
Rey purses her lips. "You mean it never came up in any of your arguments afterward?"   
  
"I mean, he was...violent later that day, but no. Not- not a word." Hux's eyes sting, and he digs his teeth into his lower lip.   
  
All that time, all that apologizing after. The tiny trust-building measures, the initial refusal to get on top of Hux ( _"You do it. I don't want you to feel...overpowered."_ ) Hux had never quite felt he deserved it, but it would have done more harm than good to say why. It was an almost. Best to let it die.   
  
But if Ren knew - if Ren _knew_ and just quietly absorbed it- It explains the lashing out and the brokenness in equal measure. He'd known, with all the Force's insight, that Hux had appraised him and found him worthless, and hadn't so much as questioned it.   
  
The tinnitus swells in Hux's ears. Rey's voice barely breaks through it: "Then that's even stranger that he didn't, well, attack you on sheer adrenaline right there."   
  
Hux nods mutely, swallows. What he hears is that Ren's _you_ -preservation instinct was stronger than his self-preservation instinct. Hux buries his nails in his palms, less distraction now than punishment. He can feel the pressure leaving curves in the skin, a tidy row of smiles. _He was better than you ever gave him credit for. He deserved so much better-_ \-   
  
"Armitage?" Rey's gaze holds something between confusion and concern. "What's wrong?"   
  
Hux's throat is tightening, and this is unbearable. "He knew. The whole _fucking_ time he knew. He thought I--" His shoulders shake, breath hitches. _You are_ not _going to fall apart for this girl to catalog. You will sit straight, and you will breathe right, and--_   
  
"I don't understand." Rey's face is a blur behind impatient tears.   
  
"No, you don't."   
  
"Help me to."   
  
There's the faintest nudge of the Force in it, more suggestion than command.   
  
But Hux can muster no response. A first tear leaks out from between his clenched eyelids. He can't stop the next or the next, and he's trembling, and every breath he tries to catch squeaks.   
  
"What were you saying he thought about you?" Rey's voice is cool, even.   
  
_You're disgusting, this is childish, stop crying right-_ fucking-now.

But then there's Ren. Ren who _knew_ and never asked and never went off yelling and never used it as leverage. Who lived with it on top of all his demons.   
  
Before Hux has realized it, the frenzy of thought leaves his head for his mouth. "All that time. He never let me apologize. I can't imagine what it did to him. I can't--" He's not even answering Rey's question, just babbling, expelling this. His face is hot; he tries to inhale but hiccups. "Every fucking night-- every fucking night he'd just--" _Curl up around me like I made him feel safe._

Hux stops himself short, but Rey presses.  
  
"Every night?” she echoes. “He'd what?"   
  
The question stops Huc mid-sob. _Shit_ .   
  
Hux sniffs. "He'd nothing. I don't know what I said, I--"   
  
"Oh," Rey says, ignoring him. Her gaze bores into him, impossibly warm. It peels back the layers of his mental shields like a soft gust of wind, almost unintentionally. "You don’t mean…” she trails off, but reaches a conclusion. “That explains it. Explains everything."   
  
"Explains what?" Hux's half-tearful incredulity convinces no one, and he knows it.   
  
“You- he-” Rey stammers, half-hushed.   
  
_How could you fuck this up, there's a reason you didn't want to tell her, you made him keep it secret while he was alive, you can't go breaking the pact--_   
  
Hux can't. Hux shouldn't. But then again, why bother?   
  
He could go on denying it, as if there would be any point. Ren's dead, and he himself is dying, and for once- for _once_ he can say it without consequences. For once, he'd like to say it. He holds Rey's gaze.   
  
“I loved him,” he says, and repeats it because he can. "I loved him."   
  
Rey tilts her head to one side. She has a look on her face as if she's reconstruing her universe to make room for this fact. She's quiet for a moment,  then asks, strangely, "Did he know?"

“What?”

Rey shrugs. “Did he know?”

_Did he know._ Not the contextual details of how or when, nor the eternally baffling _why_. Any of those would hurt less.

"Are you asking me how sexually active he was?" Hux retorts, more defensive measure than legitimate query.  
  
“No. Stars. No.” Rey flushes, recoiling. "No, I just... Relationships, connections like that, the Force plays into them. It may have had something to do with why he--"

" _It didn't._ " Hux tamps down the mental echo of his own voice, time and again, entreating Ren to stay their course, to keep to the dark.   


Rey raises her eyebrows, purses her lips. “You don’t know that.”

“If this is some sort of accusation, I--”

“It isn’t.” She looks at him, through him, steady and probing. “I’m asking if he _knew._ ”   
  
The emphasis is like a plasma bolt through the ribs. It's the question that's been shredding Hux's insides. "I thought so," he manages. "Before just now, I thought so."   
  
Rey extends a hand. It hovers over Hux’s wrist. "Will you show me?"   


_It didn't, it didn't, it didn't,_ is still pulsing through his mind. He was helpless to stop Ren from ending it, not an active factor in why he did.

Hux clears his throat, realizes he’s no longer looking at Rey, gaze fixed instead on the green blinking of the thermostat mounted on the wall behind her.

He gathers himself. He has to do this--it’s what Rey wants, and if he doesn’t satisfy her, he’s looking at another five decades of syrup-soaked green citrus, flimsipad graphs, and memories. By comparison, this is good.

But the bargain aside, it’s better, in some ways, if Rey knows. She’ll get more of the truth like this, and while it doesn’t fucking _matter_ , Hux still loathes the thought of Organa’s dear Ben or the staff’s tyrannical Leader outliving Ren himself.

“All right,” he says, after a moment. “Would you like to see how we settled it?”

Rey lifts her hand slightly, brows knitting. “Settled the assassination plot? I thought you just said--”

“No,” Hux corrects, “the capital planet debacle. You were interested in the rest of it a few minutes ago.”

“Still am,” Rey replies, earnest as ever. “Are you ready?”

Hux nods, and closes his eyes once her fingers have covered his wrist.

The darkness fades more quickly this time--perhaps, Hux thinks, because he’s less guarded about what in particular she sees. Within a few seconds, the black has resolved into the eighty-percent lighting of Hux and Ren’s shared quarters on the _Finalizer_.

.

.

The following night cycle, somewhere along the Nexus Route, Hux is at his desk reviewing the latest reports from the Mon Cala crackdown when the chamber doors iris open behind him. He throws a glance over his shoulder and immediately turns back to the wall of intel on his screen.

Though he got over his fantasies of coup d’etat, he’s still _angry_ with Ren. However, it’s hard to remember that when Ren’s fresh from training. His towel is slung around his neck, and his hair is damp from the water showers in the locker room. Hux hardly registers the object in his hand.

“My teziretts came in today.” Ren tosses the oblong container he’s holding onto the bed. It rattles as it bounces. Ren’s footsteps cross the suite, and hinges creak as he extracts a bowl from one of the kitchenette cabinets.

“Oh,” Hux says, without looking up.

Ren had ordered the roasted seeds a few standard weeks ago, some apparent desert-world delicacy he hadn’t tasted _“in decades_.” A review of the invoice had shown they were coming from that barren rock Ren’s grandfather and uncle grew up on (an early acquisition of the Order’s).

It’s a frivolous expense, but when Ren ordered them, Hux had allowed it without comment, figuring there are worse vices than a kilo of nostalgic legumes. Now--in light of the Chandrila nonsense--the sentimentality of it grates at Hux’s fraying nerves.

The thud and creak that follow tell Hux Ren’s kicked off his boots and folded himself onto the bed. There’s the pop of a freshly opened plast-tube, then the telltale clatter of dry seeds pouring into ceramic.

Ren tucks into the seeds, while Hux stares resolutely at his datapad screen. He’s done his best to stay on the bridge the past few days, avoiding Ren and the lingering specter of their argument. There’s nothing more to say on that front, but the uneasiness remains. He ignores the crunching from behind him for the moment, unsure what to do with Ren’s casualness, how he’s acting like they haven’t just had their nastiest fight in months.

Fortunately, Hux doesn’t have to deliberate long.

“I read the capital report,” Ren says, between mouthfuls.

Hux catches the sound more than the words, dismisses Ren with, “That’s good.”

“I said I read the capital report,” Ren repeats, just a bit louder. “The analysts did an impressive job.”

His meaning clicks, lights up like a new circuit in Hux’s brain. Ren wants to go back over this? He’s thought about it outside the context of the argument? (Which had become far more about acquiring Chandrila than actually settling there.)

Hux is...almost flattered, on the team’s behalf, but also given that he commissioned the assessment. Ren’s appreciation means more than perhaps it’s worth. Concealing a smug smile, he turns toward Ren in his chair. “You read it?” He sounds a bit eager in his own ears, but can’t quite help it. “You actually read it?”

“Yeah,” Ren says, in a tone suggesting that’s obvious. He plucks out a few more seeds. “I’m no closer to a decision, but--”

“You’re attempting a decision?” Hux interrupts.

“Yeah.” Ren shrugs, a concession. “I mean, you’re right. It’s time we took the next step and set up somewhere.”

It isn’t a proper apology, so Hux doesn’t acknowledge it as such. Still, it smooths over the fight’s loose ends.  “I can’t believe you sat down and read the thing,” he says, “especially after…our first briefing attempt.”

Ren traces the rim of the bowl with one finger, scrapes his teeth briefly over his lower lip. “Wanna try again?” There’s something disarmingly bashful in his tone.

“Well--” Hux is already out of his seat. “--you sound like you’re feeling somewhat reasonable today.” He snags his datapad and crosses the short span of floor between desk and bed.

“What questions do you have?” he asks, propping the pillows on his side of the bed against the headboard. “That’s how one typically starts these things when everyone’s well prepared.” He sits on the edge of the bed and swings his legs up after him.

“I know.” Ren scoffs and shoves the bowl of seeds in Hux’s direction. “But you’re trying the teziretts first.”

“Very well.” Obligingly, Hux pinches up a single seed. It’s a sharp burst of salt in his mouth at first, but whatever herb it was roasted with leaves a not-unpleasant aftertaste.

Ren watches him swallow. “And?”

“Better than I feared.”

“I’ll take it.” Ren smirks and reaches over to his night table to grab his datapad. It’s been resting where it usually does during sleep cycles, precariously close to his lightsaber.

He taps at it, then props it up near the bowl of seeds. The text of the capital analysis fills the screen, key points boxed in at the top of the document. Ren scrolls through the first section, which is dominated by an embedded image of Coruscant, gleaming silver from orbit.

“They managed not to mention the Jedi in this bit,” he remarks, skimming the pros-versus-cons analysis. Hux inches over to see the screen.

“Not terribly relevant these days.” He dips a hand back into the bowl, trying to ignore the fact that sharing the seeds likely amounts to induction into a Skywalker family tradition.

Ren pauses by a _Bottom Line_ summary textbox. “But these are good insights on the optics of building on Imperial real estate.”

“I agree.”

Ren inclines his head toward Hux. “How much of it’s yours?”

“The team’s high-caliber analytical _training.”_ Hux stretches out his left leg beside Ren’s, pulls his right toward his chest. “The assessments are all them.”

Ren keeps scrolling. “But they seem pretty partial to Corulag, and it’s got the same problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“Palpatine loyalists.” Ren pinches the doc-viewer window shut, opens the HoloNet search application. His fingertips leave a few granules of salt on the screen as he types in the planet’s name. “The assessment tries to paint that as a good thing.”

“Of course it’s less than ideal,” Hux says, “but it at least means we’ll be welcome. A lack of protesters to put down counts for something. If you’d rather not capture new territory.” If Ren writes off Corulag too, that’s three of the five choices summarily dismissed. Hux doubts the latter two will fare much better.

“Sounds boring,” Ren says, flippant where he shouldn’t be. He tilts the datapad a few degrees further in Hux’s direction. It displays rows of current images from the capital, Curamelle: street signs (Rax Avenue, Chancellor’s Way), the placard at the foundation of a skyscraper ( _‘To the glory of the Emperor’_ ), the _Palpatine Building_ sign in front of the planetary capitol.

It’s damning, if Hux is honest, nearly as bad for public messaging as Coruscant. Corulag’s only less a flagrant Imperial throwback in that the public sentiment is almost entirely organic. It merely hosted a military research base--for all its model citizenship, the planet was no political nadir. Turning it into one, however, would raise little opposition.

“We need boring,” he says carefully. “Either that or a new acquisition.”

Ren hmms, keeps flicking across the screen.  “But how is anyone going to believe we aren’t the Empire if we’ve got this--” He enlarges an image of the _Corulag Emperor_ , a likeness of Palpatine at least ten meters high in the center of Curamelle’s government corridor. It’s white marble, surrounded by glittering fountains. “--outside our palace?”

“Fuck the Republic.” Hux rubs his temples. “They should have been bothered to tear that down.”

“And it’ll piss off the locals if we do it.”

“Thereby defeating the entire purpose of setting up there,” Hux says. “Shit.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Ren’s still scrolling. He skims past Imperial iconography, until the screen fills with shots of the planet’s diverse terrain. Dense bamboo forests, long white strands of desolate beach, sprawling moors. “It is pretty, though,” he adds, a bit absently. He snags another few Teziretts.

Hux jumps at the opening. It’d be a waste not to try again. “So is Chandrila.”

“No.” Ren’s tone goes harsh with practiced dispassion. His throat bobs with a dry swallow, seeds still in hand.

“Why not?” Hux drums up some unction. “It’s exactly the sort of statement we need to make. All we’ll have to do is set up a few quality public services to overwrite the Republic’s legacy. Then if we win over the Chandrilans, we’ve got all their sympathizers with them.” _Besides_ , he knows better than to add, _we need an excuse to invade the last Core World standing._

But Ren’s knuckles have gone white around the Teziretts. His breathing is exaggeratedly controlled. “I’m _not_ going back there.”

Hux knows this look, this particular shape of Ren’s lips: not the self-righteousness curl of his sentimentality, but the quiver of naked fear. So that’s what this is about--not obeying his selective conscience so much as avoiding memories.

Hux purses his lips, debating. Ren keeps going before he can respond.

“Hux, I can’t.” A longer look at Ren’s face shows the glimmer of unshed tears. “The Light would be. Unbearable. Ben was seven years old, the last time I was there, it--” He breaks off, swallows, recovers. “You know I can’t.”

Gods. It isn’t worth _this._ (They’ll still get Chandrila eventually, but in some other way.)

“Very well,” Hux says, clearing his throat to keep the wave of sympathy out of his voice. It comes out stiff, but better that than servile. “We still have two other options from the assessment.”

“Right.” The tension leaves Ren’s frame as quickly as it had come. He opens his hand, plucks a single seed out of his palm, then chews it thoughtfully.

“What about Ganthel?” he says, after a moment.

“Care for it?” Hux hates the excited flip in his stomach. Ganthel is another easy choice, but illogical next to Chandrila, and very nearly apolitical. He knows this, but--  

“Yeah,” Ren says. “I think I do.” Ren taps the planet’s name into the search bar. Within seconds, the datapad conveys full-color images of bustling shipyards, stacked export crates, and unexpectedly wide, well-manicured downtown streets. He swipes forward, and the image shifts to the red mesas and coarse shrubbery of the planet’s outback.

“It’s sympathetic, always has been, but not an Imperial bastion,” Hux says, careful to mask his hopefulness. It was acceptable to advocate for Chandrila or Corulag on practical grounds--as long as he treats Ganthel equitably, his case for it will be no different. “Sufficient trade to keep it on the map,” he goes on, “but not so commercial we wouldn’t find real estate or local staff. I don’t object.”

“Good.”

Hux grabs a few more Teziretts and tosses them all into his mouth at once. They’re definitely saltier than he typically prefers, but the smokiness and the herbs offset it well.

“These are excellent, by the way,” he says, seeds still crunching between his teeth.

Ren smirks. “You’re welcome.”

They reach back into the bowl at the same time, fingers brushing amid the dwindling supply. Once, a casual touch like that would have shot Hux through with a fuel-cell jolt of desire. Now, by contrast, it sparks warm contentment. It fills his chest, not his gut.

After a quiet, likely oblivious moment, Ren glances back to his datapad, flicks to the next file. Blue-lined chemical diagrams spider across the screen.

“‘Kelerium,’” Ren reads. “The report said Ganthel’s the only viable supplier in the galaxy. I guess that’s their main export?”

“That, and a very niche market for dye made from their night-beetles.” Hux reaches across Ren’s arm to swipe open the next kelerium page. He nods toward the screen. “A reliable source informed me that those quarries cover most of the chaparral.”

“Right, so most of the population is employed with mining or shipping firms, or in the service sector. The analysts say it’s pretty stable.” Ren turns his head back to Hux, as if daring him to disagree.

“They’re right,” Hux says. “It’s a model economy.”

Ren ponders this for a moment, crunches noisily on a few more seeds. He looks back at the readout. The gash of a quarry looks jagged and unnatural amid rust-red rocks and stubborn, scraggly trees.

“And what about down the road?" he says. “Will the economy hold up twenty, thirty years?”

Hux’s hand freezes by the rim of the bowl. He almost asks Ren to repeat himself.  
  
_Thirty year_ s.The implication of that strips Hux's mind of any subsequent datapoints. Thirty years, and Ren says it like it's nothing, like it's a given that this that they've built is - that _they_ _are_ \-- something permanent.  
  
It shouldn't feel so foreign, or so comforting--this has always been the goal: build an immortal empire, set it in stone. But to hear it from Ren, who relies on Hux to plan any further than a month in advance--who's like a world with a thin atmosphere, all intemperate weather, constantly bouncing between extremes--is something different.  
  
Ren's fingers jostle Hux's in the bowl again.  
  
"Come on, strategist," he says, prodding Hux's stunned silence. "What's your projection?"  
  
"Yes," Hux manages. "Yes. Thirty. I mean. The ore industry should still be thriving in thirty years." If Ren takes the next three decades for granted, Hux isn't about to question him.   
  
“What is it?” Ren says slowly--he must have caught the falter. He sounds half puzzled, half amused. A smile plays at his lips.   
  
Damn him. Before he can stop himself, Hux leans over and kisses his cheek. The ridge of the scar is rough under his lips.

Once Hux has pulled back, Ren studies his lap, all but grinning now. The air between them seems suddenly warmer, denser. It’s easy to imagine the Force thrumming between them, whatever thread of it connects them vibrating like a plucked instrument. After a moment, Ren glances back up.  
  
“So that’s a vote in favor of Ganthel?”   
  
“If you like,” Hux says, struggling for nonchalance with Ren smiling _like that_ , with his damn charming crooked teeth on merciless display.

Ren studies Hux, lets the grin withdraw into an understated tug at the corner of his lips. “The report didn’t mention Ganthel was Admiral Sloane’s homeworld.”

So Ren did his research. Hux barely restrains himself from kissing him again.

“We do have analytical standards to maintain,” he says, tone controlled. “No personal biases and all that.” Sloane herself would have agreed. Sentiment shouldn’t factor into such a major political decision (and it should butt out of most others, for that matter).

“Personal biases are underrated,” Ren says. “I’m going with Ganthel.”

“As you wish, _Supreme Leader_.” Hux tries to smirk, but his face is warm, and the expression likely comes off more genuine than he intends.

“With this kind of Order history,” Hux adds after a moment, feeling generous, “there should be minimal collateral damage when we set up. If your conscience is concerned.”

“It isn’t.”

“Good.”

Ren swallows, swipes idly at the datapad for a moment. “It isn’t my conscience. You know that.”

“It certainly seems to amount to as much.” That’s the mildest way Hux can put it: it leaves out the term _short-sighted_.

But Ren must catch it anyway, or at least sense the intention. Maybe it doesn’t even take the Force. He looks back up at Hux. “It’s so easy for you. Everything’s a simple calculus. Weigh the losses against the eventual benefits, then decide. I can’t--” He fumbles for a second. “I can’t do that.”

“Of course you can. It’s a learned skill.”

“I always know--in my mind--what the mission requires.” _The mission_. He’s talking like this is some hit-and-run skirmish, not grand strategy. It shouldn’t send a pang of endearment through Hux’s chest.

Ren goes on, strained but persistent. “It’s just that I always sense the other side. I can _feel_ the repercussions in the Force for every bit of collateral damage we accept, The light recoils from it. The bigger the scale, the worse the imbalance.”

Ren’s looking straight ahead by now, lips steady, eyes dry. That’s worse, somehow, than an outburst of emotion. He can just _say_ he’s still attached to Chandrila, if he’s trying to make excuses.

But Hux will take the explanations while he can. “And that’s...every time you do something that the light deems, what? Wrong, selfish? Even now?” _(That we’ve won.)_

“The light doesn’t _deem_ anything anything,” Ren says. “It just means I feel it all. Sometimes it affects me, sometimes it doesn’t. When I’ve responded to the dark too much, it can flare up. It wants balance.”

“So it hinders your objectivity,” Hux summarizes. He purses his lips briefly, then puts a hand on Ren’s wrist, rubs circles on the skin with his thumb. “And it hurts.”

“No shit.” Ren’s lip quirks, almost sadly. There’s the glimmer of tears again, the clenching of throat muscles as he attempts to hide it. Damn him.

“Ren,” Hux says, and fuck, his own voice is starting to splinter, “look at me.” Hux’s hand strays from Ren’s wrist to the back of his neck as Ren faces him, fingers tangling in his hair. “You’ve fought this your entire life. You’re one of the strongest, most _resilient_ people I’ve ever met.” Hux inhales, moves his hand forward to cup Ren’s cheek. “I have complete faith that you will always do what needs to be done.”

“I’m still not ready for Chandrila,” Ren says, thickly. Like he thinks this is some kind of ruse, some last-ditch effort for Hux to get this way.

Hux hisses a sigh. “That isn’t what I meant.”

“So what _did_ you mean?”

In response, Hux presses his lips to Ren’s stupidly cold nose. “I meant that I trust you.” He kisses Ren’s forehead, both temples, lips brushing loose hair. “And that I admire you. Completely.”

Hux draws back, but only just: his forehead still nearly touches Ren’s, noses all but bumping. He runs his thumb along the ridge of Ren’s cheekbone. Ren’s eyes are shut, Hux realizes, trusting. He looks so damn _fragile_ —Hux isn’t sure if he’d rather enfold him in protective shields or bludgeon him to shards.   
  
“You’ve got to _stay_ strong,” Hux says, low but crisp, hopefully commanding. “Can you do that?” _For me._   
  
Ren’s eyelids flutter as he exhales. His breath hitches audibly. “Anything.”   
  
Ren opens his eyes just long enough to dip his chin forward, catch Hux’s lips between his own. Hux makes no objection. Grains of salt from the Teziretts cling to the corners of Ren’s mouth. They wind up on Hux’s tongue. It’s whatever—they’ve kissed grittier than this.

.

.

Hux finishes the memory here--before the clothes come off--for Rey’s exclusive benefit. In the instant before he returns to the world outside his head, he should feel her touch on his hand, the cold of the docked binders. The dark inside his skull shouldn’t last this long, but he finds himself trapped in it.

It’s intense and overwhelming, permeating, like his mind is a gossamer membrane, shadow saturating him like a cold sweat.

And it’s throbbing. Not like a headache. Like music. Like a single plucked chord, echoing infinitely, like the rare, frivolous moments when he’d imagine he could feel the Force woven between himself and Ren.

It feels like _Ren,_ his presence, the deafening tone, the blinding darkness. And the softness of it, the way it took him in, a perfect fit. From inside, it’s peaceful.

“Armitage!” Rey’s voice dissipates the shadows, and the visit room crystallizes around him. Belatedly, he senses the warm pressure of Rey’s fingers on his forearm, the grate of the binders against his wrists.

“What was that?” He’s gasping, and his pulse pounds. His fingers tremble above the transparent tabletop.

“What was what?” Rey draws back. She sounds more wary than curious, but she makes a show of pinching her brows together all the same.

“I-” Hux inhales, pacing himself, willing his heart to slow. “I felt him. There, for a moment. After I stopped. It felt like him, I don’t know how.”

Rey scrunches her forehead some more and nods. “Then I suppose that was a more important memory than you realized.”

“It didn’t feel like a memory.”

“The Force is unpredictable,” Rey says. “Its strength constantly surprises us.”

Hux thins his lips. She’s right. Of course she’s right. All of this is in Hux’s head, and if it can make him feel something good and warm and comforting for a change, he shouldn’t complain. If anything, he should try to replicate it, as often as possible.

“It does,” he agrees with her. “What do you want next?”

Rey’s gaze has darkened, and she shakes her head. “That’s all for today.”

“Are you certain? You don’t even want to discuss it?” Maybe she sensed what felt like him--pure, concentrated _Ren_ \--and it was too much for her. That would explain the sudden cageyness, especially when she should have a thousand follow-up questions on _them_.

What Hux told her today should change everything for her little investigation. He can only assume she’s saving the volley of questions for next time, and he did show her three separate memories today.

“I’ll meditate on it,” Rey says, rising. “I’ll see you, Armitage.”  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: mentions of canon-typical cremation, nonsexual Force-choking, and assassination plots/attempts (It's lighter this week?)


	3. Always in Motion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Detailed content warnings in the endnotes!

By the time Hux returns to his cell, his dinner tray is waiting for him. He eats all of it, hardly regarding the contents. That single, plucked chord plays over and over again, like the catchy and inane chorus of a cantina act, in the back of his mind.

It stays through the night and into the next morning, less intense now--whether due to Hux’s own acclimation or an actual change, he isn’t sure. It lingers through breakfast, and through the dotted grid of his flimsipad’s twenty-sixth page. It plays faintly as the guards on duty come to offer him a sonic shower and a shave with a safety razor. (He accepts, of course, as they don’t come often enough.)

It’s a relatively quick walk to the freshers at the end of the hall, and the guards don’t even bother cuffing him. Once there, he gets a dull razor with a small can of shaving cream, soap, shampoo, a washcloth, and twenty standard minutes. A guard on shower duty stands by the door.

Hux is the barracks-style fresher’s only occupant, but he has yet to ask if that’s standard procedure for the solitary wing, or special treatment due to his own high profile. Regardless, he’s grateful. He’d rather not expose his dick, ass, or prominent ribs to the average Republican convict.

There are three shower heads--all sonic--with low walls between them. Hux selects the middle one arbitrarily, strips, and steps in. The shower whines shrilly as he dials it on, but levels out into a faint hum once at full blast. Hux faces the stream, running his hands through his too-long hair, and tips his head up. 

The waves massage his skin--the normal prickling sensation that leaves one technically clean but less than refreshed. He’s slowly getting used to not having a water allowance, like he’s slowly getting used to this roughly milled soap, to a biweekly shave, and to always showering alone.

The thought aches as soon as it crosses his mind, and he wishes it would stir his cock, anything to make this easier. He looks down, and there’s nothing. A sonic is nowhere near as conducive to jerking off as a water shower, but it’s more private than attempting it in his cell in the small hours of the morning.

If he takes care of it here, perhaps he’ll be able to avoid a dream like last night’s, so real it hurt afterward. It still won’t be easy, remembering something that will get him off, but at least he’s in control here. He turns toward the showerhead and grips his cock, strokes from head to tip twice for a start. He closes his eyes and wracks his memory.

(The chord from yesterday is still in his head, and it’s tuning itself to match the whine of the shower.)

(He’s in control.)

 

_ Water drums against Hux’s scalp, spills in fine rivulets down the expanse of Ren’s back as he’s turned away from Hux, selecting his hair product from the shelf under the shower head.  _

_ He didn’t treat his hair in his initial sonic after returning to the  _ Finalizer _ , the one Hux had impatiently ordered he take before any of Hux’s own clothes came off. The Supreme Leader’s week on Trandosha had been largely successful, the local Resistance quashed--at least for the foreseeable future--by brute force (and  _ the  _ Force too, Hux has no doubt).  _

_ Hux’s week, by contrast, has been uneventful aside from Ren’s daily missives, and Ren sensed it as soon as he boarded. His mandatory sonic and an urgent fuck later, they’re using extra water at Ren’s insistence.  _

_ Damn good thing, too--he did a sloppy job in the sonic: a dark residue clings to the back of his neck, visible between the wet locks of hair, spreading a hand’s breadth down onto his back. How he managed to get dirt or xeno blood down his tunic, Hux has no idea. Regardless, he reaches for the soapy washcloth beside him. _

_ “Hold still,” he says, gripping Ren’s bicep with his left hand. _

_ Ren flinches at the sudden contact, but relaxes once Hux has raised the cloth to his back. Despite his solid musculature, he feels limp, almost pliable, under Hux’s hand. Hux scrubs gently, brushing aside his wet and heavy hair to get at the stain on his neck.  _

_ He works down, and the white washcloth grows bruise-violet as more of the residue comes up. The water beats at the dried substance, too, diluting it even as it stains the fabric, fiber by fiber. As the cloth gets steadily darker, Ren arches into Hux’s touch. _

_ Hux deems it satisfactory and sets down the washcloth once Ren’s skin has been rubbed pink, no granule of the residue left behind. On impulse, he leans in, presses his wet lips to the sinew where Ren’s shoulder meets his neck. It’s tender, nowhere near enough to leave a mark, and Ren stays relaxed beneath it. _

_ “Can I turn around now?” he says, once Hux has drawn back. _

_ Hux laughs. “You may not.” He slides both hands through the water streaking Ren’s back, leaves his his left at Ren’s waist, and lowers his right to palm Ren’s ass.  _

_ Ren doesn’t so much flinch as tense with the motion, muscles rippling momentarily. His voice is low but--as far as Hux can tell despite the pounding of the water--amused. “Is that what you had in mind for the shower round?” _

_ “Unless you had a different idea.” Hux moves the hand on Ren’s waist to caress his whole side. _

_ “I was thinking,” Ren says, without turning around, “the whole time I was gone, about how much I wanted your pretty cock in my hand.” _

_ It’s the languid, dark tone of his voice that catches Hux off guard, sends a fresh wave of heat to his groin.  _

_ “If and only if,” he says, forcing primness “you plan on doing a better job than my own right hand this week, you may turn around.” _

_ “I always do,” Ren replies, and turns. _

_ Hux runs a hand through his hair, brushing lank and wet strands off his forehead. Ren’s own hair is long enough to frame his face, clinging to his jawline even as he runs fingers through it, forcing it back. His eyelashes are wet and dark, stuck together in fine points. His gaze falls below Hux’s waist, and his lips quirk at the swell there. _

_ “Already?” he says, and wraps his hand around the base of Hux’s cock. “You’re easy, Grand Marshal.” _

_ Hux flushes, even under the heat of the water. “Get on with it.” _

_ Ren does. He runs his thumb from base to tip several times, slow and tantalizing, coaxing Hux into full hardness before working him in earnest. Ren’s hand is warm and large and slick with the shower water. The friction of it sends shockwaves of pleasure through Hux’s groin, setting his blood on fire.  _

_ By the time he considers touching Ren to return the favor, he’s too far gone, eyes slipping shut, heart thudding, hands limp at his own sides. As Hux gets closer, Ren massages the head of his cock, and he opens his eyes briefly. The sight of it between Ren’s long fingers, the electric sensation of his touch, sends him over the edge.  _

_ He spills in Ren’s hand, the water washing it away even as he comes. Ren kisses him with slick lips. _

 

Hux’s release spatters onto the wall of the sonic, and he supports himself against the wall. He’s still probably too weak to weather a full orgasm, but he has little choice. Once balanced enough, he reaches up to position the shower head toward the wall, to scour it clean. 

Only as he watches the mess come off does he realize that the hot water on his cheeks can’t be from the sonic. He rubs at the tears with the back of his hand. It’s pathetic, all of this.

He takes the shampoo to his hair and the soap to the rest of him. The low chord isn’t fully gone.

* * *

Surprisingly, Rey doesn’t return that day, or the next.

Hux worries at first--what if he managed to scare her off, and she won’t be back? She’ll be walking away with both the weapon she owes him and his one remaining secret. It’s with a slow, gradual resignation, over a sloppy mandala of dashes and dots, that Hux postulates that the real reason for the delay is how long it’s taking for her to run the press circuit with what he gave her.

He should have at least asked her to keep it to herself.Such an agreement wouldn’t have been binding, of course, but at least that way he’d have gotten a read on what she planned to do with the information. 

_ Ren _ . Hux presses the point of the stylus so hard it punctures the page.  _ Ren would be furious.  _

But he can’t be sure of that--that much is comforting. ( _ “What are they gonna do to us?”  _ he had said, just once, and put his arms around Hux in open air.)

But Ren is dead, and has no vote in the matter. Ren is dead in a jar on Organa’s mantelpiece, and will never know the difference.

The regret is all his own, Hux realizes, lightening his grip to trace a tiny rhombus in the upper righthand corner--the shame of  _ exposure _ . He can picture the marquis headline on the  _ Galaxy Beacon _ and the rest of the Republican prop frequencies:  _ Breaking: Intimate connection revealed between Armitage Hux and the late Kylo Ren _ . 

They’ll run images of the two of them, of course: Hux’s bleary mug shot next to a ten-year-old holo of Ben Solo, with his lopsided grin and his big ears sticking out under a curtain of thick hair. He might even have his little Jedi-cadet braid. They’ll crop out Skywalker, or maybe they won’t: maybe Organa will have him left in for sympathy.

Hux tries not to care. He fully expects the inundation of journalists to return, so he tries to decline when the guards knock on his cell door to collect him for a visitor. They tell him he can’t.

* * *

“Last time,” Rey says, once Hux is seated and cuffed down, “I didn’t want to ask you too much after everything you showed me.”

“Good of you.” Hux looks past her, to a long gray scuff on the wall behind. He isn’t going to ask her if she told anyone. He already knows, or at least can surmise. Perhaps Ren wouldn’t care if it was broadcast, at this point. Ren might have wanted it broadcast, eventually. Hux isn’t going to ask.

Rey looks at him keenly. Her hair is down today, front strands drawn back from her face with what must be a barrette in the back. It slides along her neck as she cocks her head. She ignores his remark and plunges right ahead.

“I spent the past two days thinking about it. About the two of you, sort of replaying everything you’ve shown me so far.” Rey pauses, straightens, and laces her fingers together on the tabletop. “And I noticed a sort of pattern. You didn’t properly...resolve either of those arguments, about Falleen or about Chandrila. Was that--” She stops abruptly, over-pronouncing the final  _ t _ . Hux hears  _ typical,  _ anyway.

“He was the Supreme Leader,” Hux supplies, coolly. “I could offer my piece, but there was the chain of command to consider.”

“But what would have happened if you’d kept resisting?” Rey presses. “If you said no, but the Force said yes, or something.” She stops, but not long enough for Hux to respond. She sucks in a breath, then continues softly, “You said last time that he was violent, on that first day. I was wondering--”

This time, Hux interrupts her, something cold and viscous congealing in the pit of his stomach. “It was nothing I didn’t deserve, given...what you saw.”

“I don’t know about that, but I--” Rey bites her lip for a moment, then goes on in the voice Cardinal used with his young recruits: stern, coaxing, unintentionally condescending. “I understand it’s a painful memory, but it may be helpful, if I could see it.”

Hux’s defenses are up before she can finish, and he manages to scoff. “You want to see him choking me and shoving me into walls? You’re quite the voyeuse.”

“ _ No _ ,” Rey shoots back, coloring slightly. “That’s disgusting. I just-- The fact that he did that is terribly Dark, knowing he...loved you. I’m interested in how the Force was moving there. It’s the same kind of darkness that might have led him to…” She trails off into the unspoken nightmare of Ren’s end.

“You aren’t seeing that,” Hux states, cold, and as dispassionately as possible. It isn’t so much the shame of it--though that’s a factor--as the simple truth that to remember it would be to relive it. Hux never wants to do that. “You said I don’t have to show you anything I’d rather not.”

Rey nods, a concession. “I did, yes. I won’t force you. But do you have something else that might help?”

“You want something about how the Force impacted his leadership?” It’s too general for what she wants, Hux knows, but it leaves room to share something less raw, perhaps less painful.

“And his relationship with you,” Rey qualifies. “It seems like he may have had a conflict there. You one way, and the Force the other--I doubt that ever ended well.”

She’s struck the bullseye with the first comment--at least as Ren described it--but Hux doesn’t tell her as much. It’s the second remark that he can gladly contradict. She wants to see Ren at his worst? Hux will show her him at his finest--the Force and the darkness working for them (ultimately, anyway), not against.

“You’d be surprised,” Hux says, with the ghost of a sneer.

“Would I?” Even to his vitriol, she’s earnest. 

“I can show you our capital selection efforts turned out.”

Rey’s brow furrows, skeptical now. “I already know you didn’t actually settle on Ganthel. Because of the bombing, I’m guessing?”

Hux nods once, sharply, and extends his hand. “Would you care to see that as he did?”

“The attack?” Rey’s already reaching out. Her fingers settle on warm on Hux’s cold skin.

“Yes,” Hux says, and closes his eyes. The dark there resolves quickly into a periwinkle dusk.

.

.

Ganthel City sprawls below Hux, a grey carpet glittering as streetlamps flicker on. There’s little skyline to speak of, with most of the industry concentrated at the spaceports in the western quadrant. It likewise boasts none of the layered speeder lanes of an ecumenopolis like Coruscant, or the late, great Hosnian Prime. 

The high-rise hotel he, Ren, and the rest of their delegation are staying in is decidedly the tallest building near the manicured government sector, and the view of the sunset from here on their suite’s balcony has been impressive. It’s all but faded now, leaving a few pink streaks on the horizon as the violet of early-autumn twilight settles over the city. 

He feels more than hears Ren emerging onto the balcony behind him, so it shouldn’t surprise him to find Ren’s arms wrapping all the way around him, pinning his arms to his sides. 

“What do you think?” Ren’s voice is low beside Hux’s right ear, and his breath prickles his neck unfairly.

“I think,” Hux says, and makes to duck out of Ren’s grip--his  _ embrace _ , some unnecessary part of him corrects. “I  _ think _ ,” he repeats, “that we’re a bit too exposed for this.” Just what Ganthel needs from its newest political denizens: a damn show on a balcony attached to the most prominent edifice for kilometers around.

But Ren laughs, low and soft. “Half the officers here already suspect something.” He pulls Hux closer, and brushes the tip of his nose from Hux’s earlobe to his collar. “What are they gonna do to us?”

_ Know _ , he manages not to say.  _ Know both of our greatest weakness.  _

But it’s getting dark out, and more importantly Ren’s bare arms are strong and supple, the loveliest possible vice. He relaxes into the solidity of his chest and shuts his eyes for a moment. There’s a burst of cool air as Ren tugs his collar down to press his lips pointlessly to Hux’s neck, too low for a mark to be visible, too soft to leave one anyway. His mouth lingers, warm and delicate, for a long time.

When he’s done, he asks the same thing again, voice just as low. “What do you think of it here?” he clarifies, picking up his original thread.

“It’s-” Hux says, “it’s adequate. Neatly laid out. Busy, but not overcrowded. No surprises, given the reports.”

“But could you live here?”

Hux smiles, and he knows Ren can hear it. “I’m fairly adaptable,” he says. “I can live anywhere.”

Ren snorts. “I know. I’m asking if you like it  _ here _ .”

Oh. He wants Hux’s input, as if personal preference should still factor into this. As if Hux has any.

Visiting Sloane’s homeworld should feel weightier than it has, but it’s little different from any other mid-size industrial world. Perhaps Ren can sense the significance of it--some lingering ghost of the Order’s original germ--but even visiting the shipyards had evoked nothing in Hux but appreciation for the efficiency of the customs process. It shouldn’t feel this empty. Maybe it all just needs time to sink in.

“You know one world is as good as another to me. This one makes the most sense.” Hux raises his hands to cover Ren’s on his own ribcage, tracing the veins, the bones, the tiny saber-spark scars. “My opinion isn’t the one that counts.” He drops his hands to his sides again, and loosens Ren’s arms to turn to face him.

Ren acquiesces, but doesn’t let go of him for long. His arms encircle Hux’s waist, and Hux loops his own around Ren’s neck, cupping the base of his skull.

“I think I like it,” Ren says, after a moment. His eyes are impossibly deep in the gathering dusk. “It’s a blank slate. No history, no memories.”

“You need that,” Hux says. 

“So I think it’s okay.” Ren purses his lips for a moment, looks over Hux’s shoulder to the city glow. “Sometimes it’s hard to know if what I’m feeling--when it’s Dark--is my surroundings or... just me.”

Hux fingers the soft wisps of hair at the nape of Ren’s neck. He tries to ignore the drop of cold in the pit of his stomach. “You’re feeling something’s off?” he asks, forcing nonchalance.

Ren shakes his head, then looks back at him. “It’s nothing,” he says.

“Good,” Hux replies, and works his fingers higher into Ren’s hair. It’s easier than calling bullshit.

* * *

The next morning, Hux awakens gradually, to the steady, constant yellow light of full morning, and to the weight of Ren’s arm around his shoulders. It doesn’t take longer than a few slow blinks to recall where he is, registering the uncharacteristically tidy hotel room and the daylight filtering through the transparisteel doors to the balcony.

It’s late. Judging by the sun, it’s well after 0800, and Hux has no excuse. He should have set an alarm, but made the mistake of trusting habit to wake him at his usual 0530. The time difference on the planet must have him lagging, but still. It’s no excuse.

There  _ is  _ no excuse. They didn’t even have sex last night, just split a bottle of wine as Hux got tipsy enough to babble without pause about the renovations they should make to the executive building that will serve as their - as Ren’s palace, and Ren got tipsy enough to smile the whole time. Then, around 0030, they just. Went to bed. Like there was no need for anything else, like they’d have ten thousand chances to fuck on Ganthel hereafter, and it wasn’t  _ urgent _ .

So. Hux got a staggering eight hours of sleep, and has no reason to stay in bed. He isn’t remotely tired. He’d get up if Ren weren’t such a damn light sleeper. The slightest dip of the mattress, much more moving his arm to squirm out from under it, will wake him, and he looks. He looks-- Well. The sunlight flatters him, anyway. Hux doesn’t see him in it often enough.

They’re curled into each other, facing each other, and Hux studies his face--the moles, the puckered line of the scar, the dramatic eyelashes fanning dark on his skin. One must have come loose overnight--it clings to the space between the corner of Ren’s eye and the bridge of his nose. Hux resists the urge to brush it away.

His breathing is slow and steady, and if Hux moved his hand just a few centimeters, he could splay it on his chest and feel his heartbeat. He doesn’t. Ren needs the rest, and Hux needs-- _ this _ . To see him at peace. It’s like a dose of hope. He could get used to it.

He’s resolved to stay put when Ren’s eyelids flutter open--two blinks, then alertness so full it’s shocking. He doesn’t move his arm, and he murmurs, “What?” His voice is a few steps behind his eyes, still slurred and sleepy.

“Nothing, I--” Hux replies, matching his low tone. “Nothing. I didn’t-- Was I  _ feeling  _ too loudly for you to sleep?” The last bit comes out scornful, and Hux hates it.

“No, I just--” Ren starts, gaze searching Hux’s face, but he’s cut off by a sound like a clap of thunder from outside. It lingers in the air, like the soundwaves can’t stop shuddering, and the vibration rocks the hotel room, even twelve storeys up.

“What the  _ fuck _ ,” Hux says. He can feel his pulse in his temples. He flings aside Ren’s arm, and Ren flings aside the covers, calls his lightsaber to his hand, and takes the few paces from his side of the bed to the transparent panes of the balcony doors. Hux rounds the bed and joins him.

“Hux,” Ren breathes. His right hand is taut around the saber’s hilt, knuckles blanching.

A few blocks over, a massive column of black smoke curls skyward. 

Hux can’t even manage to curse. This isn’t what it looks like. It can’t be.

“I knew,” Ren says, darkly, absurdly. 

Hux turns to question him when his comm dings from his night table. Emergency alert sequence. Code Black. He crosses the room again, and at least has the presence of mind to connect with audio only on this side.

Unamo’s blue ghost hovers over the transponder.

“Hux,” Hux says. “Report.”

“General, there’s been an explosion at Executive Building Three Thousand.” The Order representative’s headquarters, where half the officers stationed on-planet report for duty.

Hux purses his lips. This much is obvious. “Probable cause?” he asks, and dreads the answer.

“It’s too early to say, sir, but the investigation will--”

“Improvised explosive.” Ren shouldn’t be speaking on Hux’s private comm--it might raise questions--but it’s too late, and he’s put his back to the window, gaze fixed on Unamo’s projection.

“Supreme Leader,” she acknowledges, brows pinching briefly in surprise.

“It was a bomb,” he repeats, needlessly.

Hux ignores him, addresses Unamo. “And what about the damage?”

“Extensive. The building is hardly standing. We don’t have a figure on casualties yet--”

“Three hundred.” Ren gnaws his lip for a moment. His fingers squirm around the saber’s activator switch. “Damn it, at least three hundred!”

_ Fuck.  _ Hux is cold all over. He forces himself to inhale and exhale. “Understood, Colonel,” he tells Unamo. “Send a transport for us.”

“Sir.”

Hux ends the transmission and looks at Ren. “Get dressed.”

“I knew,” Ren says, and his lips are trembling. He’s balled his left fist at his side, but the right toggles the activator switch. “I should have known. That thing, the thing that was wrong last night, I…  _ Fuck _ .” He’s digging his fingers into his palm, and he squeezes his eyes shut. “ _ Fuck _ .”

“Ren,” Hux starts, but it’s a relief when Ren cuts him off. He isn’t sure where he’s going, and Ren may even have a point. What the hell are matter-altering metaphysical powers good for if not to prevent instances of mass casualties among your own damn people?

“I didn’t do anything!” Ren’s left hand is in his hair now, raking mercilessly. “I didn’t do anything about it, I should have--”

Of course, Ren’s vague perception of _wrongness_ didn’t sound strong enough to provide any actionable intelligence, but Hux can’t be sure. So he bites down platitudes about how this isn’t Ren’s fault. “Ren,” he says, and steps toward him slowly, hands halfway up like a scared, drunk pacifist, “this isn’t helping.”

“ _ And _ ?”

“I don’t what you thought you saw, or felt, or sensed last night. But this happened. You didn’t mean for it to. But it happened.” Hux stops half a meter in front of him, wary of the saber. His own voice is shaking, and he’s still freezing cold. “So get dressed. We need to be down there.”

Ren closes his eyes, thins his lips, and draws a long, slow breath. His grip on the hilt loosens, and the fingers of his left hand uncurl. He opens his eyes and walks past Hux to set the saber on the bed, leaving it to momentarily drown in the twisted covers.

He puts it on his belt once they’re both done dressing, and they descend to board the transport without a word.

* * *

 

Beside what’s left of Executive Building 3000, smoke hangs in the air, heavy with the scent of shot wiring and charred flesh. Droids and stormtroopers pick through the rubble, all crumbling cinderblock and jutting I-beams. Med droids and their associated local techs guide repulsor stretchers bearing bloodied survivors toward hospital transports. 

From where Hux stands on the sidewalk, a row of body bags--both vacant and sealed--stretches almost to the limit of sight. Beside him, two local paramedics wrap a seared, lacerated head and torso into one. There’s a neglected human hand on the pavement about a meter in the opposite direction. With effort, Hux neither covers his nose nor breaks down into furious tears.

“Our scans are detecting heavy concentrations of baradium and axidite,” Unamo reports. She’s facing Hux and Ren, her back to the rubble, but she makes eye contact with neither, gaze fixed past them, focused on a point in the space between. “As the Supreme Leader hypothesized--” She dips her head in Ren’s direction, then resumes staring straight ahead. “--all indications do point to an improvised detonator.”

Ren has been silent since they arrived, but his body shows it’s the quiet of hardly repressed anger, not of grief. He carries himself stiffly, excessively controlled, like someone walking with a container of boiling water--one misstep, and the glass breaks. Everyone around gets burned.

Hux has said little either, taking in the carnage wide-eyed and irate. He nods to Unamo as they zip the bag over the mostly-body. The hand might go with it, but the skin of both is too marred for him to match them.

Unamo continues: “We’re still working to determine how they got an explosive device past the guards and sensors at the entrances. Survivor accounts and technical data confirm all protocols were being followed.”

Hux fidgets behind his back. It’s obvious what happened here. “You’re neglecting the fact that they’ve got a Jedi,” he says, through half-gritted teeth. “I’m certain our security systems proved no obstacle.”

“No.” Ren speaks up before Unamo can reply. His voice is sharp, but not steady. “This wasn’t her. She wouldn’t stand for this.”

Hux’s hands fall to his sides, and he turns toward Ren. “Clearly her Resistance  _ does. _ ”

Ren shakes his head. “This wasn’t her,” he insists. “I can’t sense her. She isn’t here.”

Ren’s apparently intimate metaphyiscal connection with the girl has been a sore point for the past year and a half, but it shouldn’t make Hux angrier than the sight of a ruined Order facility and hundreds of his soldiers dead or dying. It does. 

Hux smiles, lips stretched thin and ugly. “Then if not your virtuous scavenger, who?”

Ren whirls toward him, taking his eyes from the rubble for the first time. “I don’t  _ know _ , Hux! If I did, this wouldn’t have happened!” He inhales, but his voice still thrums with suppressed emotion. No one flinches at the neglect of Hux’s title. “There must be a local splinter cell we underestimated. Maybe they had an insider.”

Hux turns to Unamo. “Colonel, is there a secure space where we can be briefed on any Resistance activity observed on-planet?”

Never mind that all the Order’s best intelligence had been gleaned to produce the capital assessment, and had found nothing to indicate a viable Resistance on Ganthel. Never mind that this shook the very reason they’re here, and above all that the timing can’t be a coincidence. Maybe local police will have something that wasn’t shared with the Security Bureau liaisons stationed here.

“Yes, sir,” Unamo is saying, “we’ve set up an investigative triage in Building Four Thousand.”

* * *

 

In a secure conference room on the first floor of Building 4000, FOSB officers, Ganthel City cops, forensics experts, and upper-ranking naval staff mull around a holotank projecting the blueprints for Building 3000. In a second pane, a grid populates with a thumbnail holo image of each newly identified victim. This chart is deceased alone, and it’s now ten-by-fifty-one.

The police didn’t have much to start with on Resistance leads, but Ren’s been grilling their chief in a corner for the past fifteen minutes. Something conveniently neglected should be resurfacing at any moment. Hux lets the hum of conversation ebb and flow around him, waves of white noise. This shouldn’t have happened. Not now. He can’t stop tapping on the faces in the second pane.

Lieutenant N. Boral, 203rd, Military Intelligence. MOS: Signals Collection. Homeworld: Coruscant.

Commander X. Herranu, Chief, Ganthel Public Affaris Cadre. Homeworld: Lothal. 

Sergeant S. Rander, 401st, Science & Technology. MOS: Quintessence Containment Engineering. Homeworld: Hays Minor.

“General Hux?”  _ Homeworld: Arkanis. _

Hux blinks, and turns from the holotank, following the low voice to Unamo, who’s seated in the chair next to where he’s been standing. The buzz of the room has been reduced to whispers, and its occupants are all seated, leadership around the table, other experts in chairs along the walls or clustered in empty corners. 

“There is a seat for you near the head of the table, sir.” She dips her head.

Heat prickles briefly across Hux’s face.  _ Idiot, they’re waiting on you.  _ He thanks Unamo and projects, “Apologies,” to the rest of the room, then makes his way to the empty chair at Ren’s right hand. 

Hux spends most of the twenty-minute status briefing watching Ren’s body language as discreetly as possible, which means neither of them are paying much attention. Ren is rigid in the high-backed chair, gaze unfocused, staring right through the lines above the tank. He doesn’t move except for the arrhythmic drum of his fingers against the left armrest. 

Something tense and heavy hangs around him--Hux can’t quite describe it, but he knows Ren well enough to know this, too. When a storm is brewing. For fuck’s sake, just let the equipment in here survive it.

The briefer concludes with the first phrase Hux registers as unexpected, given all he’s read so far: “--data will assist you as you make your decision on a response, Supreme Leader.”

_ Fuck.  _ Was that the point of this? A full recap of information to fully inform Ren before he reacts? It’s a bit soon for that--the two of them haven’t even discussed--

“My decision is made.” Ren’s gaze has gone keen and hungry, and he turns to address Unamo. “Colonel, as soon as this meeting is adjourned, alert the  _ Eclipse II  _ to strike Chandrila.”

_ Chandrila.  _

That’s it. That’s the thunder. 

Shocked, Hux fights back a smile. Ren isn’t in the habit of dealing productively with anger--much less the urge for vengeance--so this is both surprising and--fantastic.

It shouldn’t have taken a disaster like this to convince him, of course, but at least something useful is coming out of it. Still, he needs to clarify before celebrating.

“Is this the launch of an offensive, Supreme Leader?” he prompts.  _ Strike  _ is an ambiguous term.

“It’s retaliation, General,” Ren replies, then turns back to Unamo. “Four strikes. Government facilities. Within eighteen standard hours.”

Unamo inclines her head, already opening her datapad. “Sir.”

The meeting wraps up quickly after that, and Hux is too pleasantly surprised by Ren’s shift in opinion to dwell on the  _ retaliation  _ clapback. 

“Chandrila.” He catches Ren’s arm once they’re both standing, and the assembly has begun to dissolve. He drops it immediately, but raises his eyebrows, lips working to contain a smile. “I thought you said this wasn’t mainstream Resistance?” Hux could care less--any excuse to punish Chandrila will do, but he’s curious.

“The police chief thinks it might be,” Ren says, with an unfairly appealing curl of the lips. “They apparently have a policy of withholding threat intelligence to attract more trade prospects.”

Hux purses his lips, looks down. “Of course they fucking do.”

“But regardless,” Ren goes on, “we know it was Resistance-inspired. We strike Chandrila, we strike their ideology. We have to do something. I have to--”

The smile breaks past Hux’s attempts to mask it. He doesn’t bother pointing out how Ren echoes him. “I... _ concur _ ,” he says, because the room is too crowded for  _ love you _ . 

The strike isn’t enough to deal with Chandrila, not yet, but it’s a beginning. And it’s beyond gratifying to see Ren coming around, to see him furious over the loss of their people, the blow to their future. As if they--and all of this--matter to him, for their own sake, not just to boost his own ego and administer his vendettas.

Ren eyes him almost fondly, as if he’s following this whole chain of thought. “Good,” he says.

Hux doesn’t respond for a moment, letting the silence linger before changing the subject. “We need a news conference.”

“I’m not going to--”

Hux manages not to roll his eyes. “ _ I  _ need a news conference. Every journalist in the sector has descended on this street. They don’t need to acquire any ideas of their own.”

Ren’s lip quirks upward. “You have a statement ready.” It isn’t a question.

“I have a lot to say.”

* * *

 

Ninety standard minutes later, Order officials have assembled correspondents and cam crews from every agency represented at the scene in the lobby of Building 4000. Hux surveys them from a makeshift dais, command cap clutched at his right side. An occasion like this shouldn’t generate the usual high of being momentarily  _ on _ , of the laser focus of a trillion beings in the lenses of the blinking hovercams, of an intimate sort of power. It does, anyway.

The room is silent but for the soft beeps of the cams. Hux begins.

“Here on Ganthel we have witnessed today the single greatest loss of life outside kinetic action in the history of the Order’s military. Five-hundred twelve. Five-hundred twelve, and over a thousand more injured. Five-hundred twelve loyal, valiant soldiers, working noncombatant missions that served to protect and secure our burgeoning nation. 

“They were targeted this morning by the terrorist organization still styling itself the Resistance, for doing nothing more than their duty. They will not return to their homes and families on Anaxes, on Arkanis, on Corellia, Corulag, Coruscant, or here on Ganthel, on Hays Major, Hays Minor, Hevurion, Kuat, Lothal, Tatooine, or Utapau. We mourn, but our grief and anger will spur us onward, not cripple us.

“Acts such as this one sow chaos where we pursue stability, mistrust where we seek unity. They show our enemies for the cornered animals that they are--weak, injured, lashing out in a final, futile, reactive attempt at relevance. Every cowardly creature screams and flails as it dies. Let it make noise, but its fate is sealed. Its coup de grace is coming, and all the more swiftly for the blow it managed.

“The galaxy will not be divided by this senseless act of violence. We will stand united for justice, for security; for the glory of the Order, and of the Supreme Leader. Long may he reign.”

With the last word, the journalists start clamoring. Hux leaves the questions for what remains of the Public Affairs Office, and leaves the dais.

Once out of sight of the cams, Ren approaches him from the shadows to stage-right. “Well said, Grand Marshal.”

Hux tries not to preen, smirks instead. “I live for your affirmation, Supreme Leader.”

Ren snorts. “As it should be.” He lets a smirk linger for a moment, but his expression quickly sobers. “Is there anything else you’ll need to take care of before you leave the planet?”

Funny way of putting it. Hux tries levity again. “Shouldn’t you be giving me any orders you have before  _ we  _ leave?”

The rest of the visit can’t continue as planned with the Ganthelian officials preoccupied with the attack, and besides, the purpose is null. It would appear Ganthel won’t be a suitable capital for the present. 

Ren’s expression remains firm. “I’m not leaving, Hux. I’m going to stay to root out the cell here.”

The thunderstorm sensation, Hux notices, hasn’t left. Apparently the Dark won’t be satisfied without some measure of reckless behavior.

“There’s no need for that,” Hux replies , then lowers his voice. “It’s clear they picked this target, today, for a reason.”  _ You’re the reason. _

“Clearing them out will go faster if I do it myself,” Ren says. “And now I’ll be able to identify it if I sense a second attack coming.”

A cold knot tangles deep in Hux’s stomach. “And what if they try something different next time?”

Ren doesn’t answer right away, but tilts his head to the right and turns toward the corridor behind him. Hux follows, and they walk a few paces past the evacuated offices of non-essential personnel before he speaks.

“If everything goes right, they won’t be aware I’m still here.” 

“You’re- you’re staying undercover.” Hux pops his lips. “You’re the Supreme Leader, Ren. It doesn’t work like that anymore.”

Ren ignores him. “I’ve arranged everything with the police and FOSB. Only a handful of cleared staff will know I’m here. It shouldn’t take more than a week to finish them off.”

“This is absolutely ridiculous. Have you not stopped to consider--”

“It’s done, Hux.”

Hux inhales, long and steady, then turns his head to study Ren’s profile. He looks impassive from this angle, all full, set mouth and the scar snaking down like a reminder, like a blood oath for revenge.

“All right,” he says, slowly. “If you’re going to do this, I’m going to stay and run security for you.” Ren has less backup now than he did in the old days, and Force knows he’s too arrogant to request it now. If he’d even have the chance.

“No, you aren’t,” Ren says, unmistakably tense. “You’re needed on the  _ Finalizer _ . If the  _ Eclipse II  _ requires any support.”

Hux sneers. “And why the fuck would it require support for four surgical strikes?”

Ren takes a quick, agitated huff of breath, then grabs Hux’s arm, forcing him to a stop. He whirls toward him. “Look. It isn’t safe here.”

Hux spreads his hands. “Hence why I tried to dissuade you from staying.”

“It isn’t safe for  _ you _ .”

Of all the condescending bantha-shit. “I’m not the one they targeted.”

Ren’s eyes flash. “Do you really think they wouldn’t like to get both of us?”

He has a point, but Hux refuses to acknowledge it. “I don’t know, Ren. I don’t  _ know _ .” He takes a breath and gathers himself. “If you think you’ll be able to sense it if they come after you, won’t you be able to sense it for me, too?”

“Hux.” Ren glances down, and--apropos of nothing--starts rubbing his thumb where he’s still gripping Hux’s arm. “I’m not going to take that risk.” He looks back up and holds Hux’s gaze for several seconds. 

Fuck him. Hux moves his face a centimeter closer to Ren’s. “Don’t  _ treat me  _ like I’m breakable.”

“I didn’t say you were fucking breakable.” Ren’s tone matches the heat of Hux’s for a moment, then he pauses. When he picks up, it’s slightly cooled, slightly splintered. “You’re just. Indispensable.”

Hux knows this. He always has. He knows it better than Ren does. But hearing him say it catches him so far off-guard that he acquiesces.

* * *

Within three days, Chandrila has surrendered. If they’d known it would take this little, they could have done it years ago and saved the moral conundrum. Hux took the message in the soundproof observation room attached to the bridge, then dismissed the officers who were present to begin a transcription and series of reports. They aren’t to announce it to the rest of the crew, so activity continues as normal.

Hux lingers in the observation room, watching them mindlessly. He hasn’t heard from Ren since he left Ganthel, and hasn’t attempted contact, for fear it might compromise him. This, though--this news is worth the risk. Before he can think better of it, he’s extracted his comm and dialed Ren’s frequency.

Ren picks up almost immediately, with full-body holo. He’s smiling with  _ both  _ corners of his mouth. “You beat me to calling you,” he says. “I was going to as soon as I got back to my transport.”

Hux sobers somewhat. “Is everything all right?”

“We got the perpetrators,” Ren says. His voice is electric. “Neutralized the whole cell. The local forces are clearing out the materials now. It’s done.”

Mindful of the transparent panes around him, Hux schools his expression, affecting mild pleasure, but not delight. “Congratulations, that’s - excellent. It didn’t take long.”

“They were even easier to find than I’d hoped.” Ren stops notably short of  _ I-told-you-so _ , pausing for a moment before asking, “Why’d you comm, though?”

Hux purses his lips to keep the smile in. “Chandrila surrendered.”

Even with the cyan monochrome of the holo, Ren’s eyes brighten. “Just like that?”

“I always said they were weak.” Hux has no such qualms about  _ I-told-you-so _ . “But I didn’t realize four strikes on government civilians would be all it took.”

“That’s incredible,” Ren says, then adds, lip quirked, “I’m still not setting up there, though.”

Not that Hux would think of setting up  _ anywhere _ for the time being. The dying beast might snap too hard. He doesn’t say as much, though. Today is a good day. A step in the best possible direction.

“Did I ask that?” he deadpans.

Ren snorts. “You seem to think we have to be in the same sector for me to know what you’re thinking.”

Hux can’t help himself, and covers his mouth to hide his smile.

“What’s _ this _ ?” Ren raises eyebrows, then mimics him, long, thick fingers folding over his full lips.

“I’m in the observation room,” Hux explains, recovering himself. “Can’t look like I’m enjoying briefing my arsehole commanding officer.”

Ren drops his hand, and laughter plays at the corners of his mouth. “Since when am I your commanding officer?”

“Really.”

“I’ll rephrase,” Ren says. “Since when do you  _ refer to me  _ as your commanding officer?”

Hux conceals his smile again, briefly. “You seem to be entirely overlooking the  _ arsehole  _ part.”

“Which part?”

“Also the  _ fuck-you _ part,” Hux replies, and belatedly hopes no one on deck is attempting to lipread. “When are you leaving Ganthel?”

“Later tonight,” Ren says. “See you soon.”

“See you,” Hux says, and ends the comm.

.

.

Rey’s expression is surprisingly soft, when she comes back into view. There’s something wistful in it, as well as something vaguely surprised. Her lips are parted slightly at first, then she thins them into a sad smile, and tilts her head to one side.

“You made each other happy,” she says. It isn’t a question, and her tone is more reflective than anything, as if she’s weighing this against a vast body of contrary data.

“When he wasn’t spoiling the mood with dark premonitions,” Hux qualifies, unsure if Rey will catch his sarcasm, unsure if he wants her to.

She does, if the slightly wickeder shade of her smile is any indication. “And I get the impression you would have told him just the same.”

“I did,” Hux says, but redirects the conversation to its previous thread. “But the premonitions...and intuitions...weren’t all bad, as you can tell.”

“He didn’t stop the bombing,” Rey says, “and you still say that?”

“He couldn’t have,” Hux retorts. “But he was absolutely instrumental to the investigation and action that followed.” 

Rey says nothing, looking keenly at Hux like she’s absorbing every word. After a few moments of this, Hux returns to her question.

“You do agree that he couldn’t have?”

“Definitely.” Rey blinks, returning to herself. “Of course he couldn’t have, at least not based on what I sensed when you showed me. I’m just--surprised you caught on.”

Hux curls his fist, working his nails into the heel of his hand. He wants to backhand her, and he isn’t sure he’d be able to stop himself, if not for the binders. She doesn’t know the half of it.

“I knew him,” Hux snaps back. “I may not have understood everything about his abilities, but I knew him. I try not to misdirect my anger.”

Rey frowns. “But you let him bomb Chandrila. That was definitely misdirecting--you knew they weren’t behind it. That we weren’t.”

So Ren was right about that, too. “Why would I have stopped him? It fit right into my strategy.”

Rey’s missing the point of this: that the darkness seamlessly matched Hux’s strategy, that the Force--despite its initial unhelpful warning--rounded up the terrorists and brought Chandrila to its knees. It  _ helped _ , didn’t just drag Ren down, like he’d feared about Chandrila before.

“I suppose.” Rey’s gaze drops to the tabletop as she trails off. “He didn’t do it for that, though. It was all anger. It was…very Dark.” 

Hux bristles, though it shouldn’t surprise him to hear her call one of Ren’s best unilateral decisions of the war  _ Dark _ . “Hardly anyone was even killed,” he says, defensive for a reason he can’t quite place. “It did a cleaner job than an invasion ever would have.” 

“I know,” Rey says, “we got a transmission about their surrender before they announced it, and it said the same, but… It’s the way he changed his mind like that. Or the Force changed his mind. Which shouldn’t stand out like it does,” she admits. Her lips twist into another wry, wan smile. “Like we’ve said before, he wasn’t--”

“--predictable,” Hux supplies, but Rey says it in step with him, in an absurd little chorus.

After an embarrassed moment, Hux clears his throat, on his dignity again. “I hope that was still helpful, even if it complicated your analysis.”

Rey snorts. ““My analysis is a barkrat’s nest as it is. What’s one more piece?”

“I imagine,” Hux replies blandly. A part of him wants to ask about the rest of it--what else she’s come to believe about Ren, and how it’s wrong--but she speaks up before he can articulate it.

“It’s enough to reflect on for today,” she says, pushing her chair back and standing. “I’ll see you tomorrow, though, if that’s still okay?”

“Yes,” Hux replies, “of course.”

* * *

 

Back in his cell, Hux picks over the rice and vegetables on his dinner tray, ignoring the ringing that returned to his ears as soon as he was alone with his thoughts. Of course the mere memory of Ren would do this--get stuck, ineluctably, in Hux’s head, the sheer magnitude of him, dialing every gauge in Hux’s mind to its limits.

Rey needs to see all of it, or at least more of it. Of everything that contradicts whatever image of him she’s drawn up. He has more where Ganthel came from.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: The aftermath of a terrorist attack (suicide bombing) is described in somewhat graphic detail.
> 
> ..
> 
> A song rec for you [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=KQ99ouGxgkg), courtesy of the lovely [Clarice Chiara Sorcha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha)


	4. Worse than War

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional content warnings in the end notes, as always!

When Rey returns, Hux gives her a thin, demure smile, and proposes his next memory. If Ganthel showed the Force’s rare usefulness and Ren reacting well to the unanticipated, his next offering should show the other, more common side of it: the Force doing the same ugly number on him that it had with regard to invading Chandrila.

“It wasn’t just about his personal experiences, I mean… about memories that were Ben’s,” Hux says. The dead boy’s name feels sour on his tongue, and the binders are cold against his skin. The cooling unit hums, expelling a frigid gale. 

“So this one is like Falleen,” Rey supplies. She chafes her arms, too.

Hux agrees. “Like Falleen, except he fought it better. Fought it too hard, I thought.”

“ _ You  _ thought?”

At Hux’s affirmative, Rey asks to see. Hux accommodates.

.

.

A kilometer above the surface of Hays Minor, the command shuttle parts the last of the world’s thick, low-hanging clouds. Thin shreds--now little more than strands of fog--fly past the viewport, barely obscuring the brown and gray expanse of earth below. This hemisphere is caught between winter and spring, the tundra thawed but not yet warmed, barren.

Hux stands at the viewport, watching the tidy grey installations of the Order base come into focus, each one a perfect prism, like a child’s toy blocks. The pinioned forms of shuttles darken the edges of a spaceport’s landing field; those too look unreal, perfect, from this distance. It’s impossible not to feel a surge of pride--the underrated beauty of a thing that  _ works _ .

Almost involuntarily, Hux straightens his cuffs, adjusts the tilt of his cap. This place merits his best form.

Absorbed, he hardly feels Ren’s eyes on him from the chair behind, and Ren’s voice pulls him out of his thoughts. “Are you really going to wear the hat?”

For fuck’s sake.

Hux turns about 90 degrees, enough to acknowledge him, but not to dignify his comment. “We’re making a morale-boosting visit to a military installation. Of course I’m going to wear the hat. I have to look the part.”

“I hate that hat.” Kylo Ren has a remarkable talent: the ability to sound sulky and flirtatious all at once.

Hux pivots back to the viewport to hide his smile, pursing his lips to no avail. “Then sign an act officially removing it from the--”

“You hate it, too.” Hux can practically hear him quirking his eyebrow.

“That’s irrelevant,” Hux says, losing the battle with his smirk. He puts his back to the dead landscape out the viewport and moves to stand behind Ren. He places both hands on Ren’s shoulders and bends down until his mouth nearly brushes Ren’s ear. “Besides, if you behave, it’ll come off once we get to the executive suite.”

“Just the hat?” Ren murmurs, nearly smirking. He tilts his head to catch Hux’s lips between his own--a slow, certain, indulgent kiss, like something taken for granted. Hux’s eyes are closed when he feels the brief burst of air that marks the hat coming off, but he opens them in time to see Ren set it on the control panel in front of him.

Hux pulls back long enough to catch his breath, to whisper against Ren’s lips that he believes some other articles could be arranged. 

In response, Ren cups Hux’s hips, tugging him down, closer. Hux resists the urge to straddle him, go for his fly and ride him till he screams right here in the shuttle’s private observation room. But their ETA is in twenty standard minutes, and while the orgasms won’t take that long, the clean-up may.

Ren must sense--or at least guess--the thought because he smirks. “And after that?”

“I’ll preemptively requisition one new bed for the executive suite, shall I?” Hux murmurs. “I think they’ll need it by morning.”

Ren’s smirk spreads into something like a real smile, if not quite a grin. His right hand drifts down to palm Hux’s cock through his tunic, between the flaps of his greatcoat. It sends an immediate, unfair burst of heat through Hux’s gut, then Ren withdraws, as if attuned to the reaction. “Can’t wait.”

* * *

Hays Minor had been an early candidate for Starkiller, given its remoteness and steady, dry climate, but it was eliminated after analysis suggested that such a use would squander the planet’s natural resources--namely, a highly conductive ore dispersed beneath its sprawling tundras. When the Order arrived, the mining industry was already highly prolific. All that remained had been to nationalize the quarries and drill new ones to complement them: the planet’s exports had doubled within six standard months.

As mine by mine was emptied, stripped to barren black rock, the abandoned quarries provided safe and efficient grounds for weapons testing. With the current, robust state of the Order’s arsenal, the testing has more or less ended. The mining, however, goes on, overseen by the Order’s appointed governor, Major General Rif Dawlan. 

Not every operational quarry is a labor camp, but Planum Sebris--the first stop on Hux and Ren’s four-day tour--is.

Outside the gaping entrance to its primary shaft, frigid wind smacks Hux’s cheek, and he’s stuffed his cap in his pocket to keep the breeze from snatching it off his head.

“Foreman Yenba and I are proud to report that Planum Sebris is Hays Minor’s most productive facility,” Dawlan explains, hands clasped at parade rest. Beside her, Yenba nods affably, smoothing down the billowing hems of his sleeves. “With a total output of thirteen kilotons daily, Planum Sebris ore constitutes forty percent of planetary exports.”

As she speaks, a turbolift car rises from the darkness behind her, and five human workers step out, blinking at the white light pouring in through the mouth of the cave. Bruised and emaciated, they carry protective helmets in their hands, and the sergeant on duty beside the lift escorts them out. They pass close enough to Hux, Ren, and the other officers to make out the digits laser-branded on their necks. 

It’s an impressive operation, if Yenba hasn’t paid off Dawlan to exaggerate. Since he surrendered his company willingly in the initial invasion, he’s kept his position, and retains a cut of the profits, despite the mine’s penitentiary function and military staffing. 

Hux confirms the shift length. If they’re overworking the prisoners, this level of efficiency isn’t sustainable.

“Fourteen hours, sir,” Yenba replies, “with two thirty-minute meal breaks. We’re fully compliant with regulations.”

Hux gives him a thin smile. “In that case, High Command applauds your efforts.”

A fresh contingent of workers approaches from behind the officers, probably a dozen prisoners and two guards, clearly prepared to board the lift and start a shift. Hux turns to watch them, shuffling over the dead yellow grass in tattered shoes. Ren has turned, too.

He’s been as quiet as usual for the first hour of the visit, but he speaks up without taking his eyes off the incoming workers. “What’s the overall schedule like?” he asks. 

Stupidly, something tries to flip over in Hux’s chest. He finds few things more attractive than Ren’s rare demonstrations of interest in detail. It seems an unconscious mimicry of Hux’s own style, the fact of which is both charming and empowering.

As Yenba goes on to extol the virtues of keeping the mine operational twenty hours a day, with rotating cleaning and maintenance shifts for the off-hours, Ren’s gaze follows the fresh workers as they’re herded into the lift. Hux watches Ren, watching them, until the car disappears into the darkness of the shaft below.

After a few more statistics from their hosts, they board a ground speeder back toward the main camp. Hux and Ren are offered the backseat, the roomiest of the compact military transport’s three rows, and take it.

Dawlan offers some production figures as they pass outer rings of guardshacks, barracks, and the distant, belching smokestacks of the on-site refinery, but says no more after acknowledgment from Hux and a few questions from Bolander and her aide. The speeder’s motivator hums faintly, nearly filling the silence. 

Nearly.

Hux manages to watch the landscape out the viewport for a moments. The sky is white with cloud cover, and the wind keeps up, buffeting dust and dead leaves against the transparisteel. 

It doesn’t take him long to turn to Ren. “This is a model operation,” he says, and tacks “Supreme Leader” onto the end for the benefit of the rest of the speeder’s occupants.

“I know.” Ren stares out the viewport, and doesn’t look at Hux. 

Hux thins his lips, tries to bites back a half-hissed reprimand. It’s stupidly embarrassing when Ren’s short with him in front of the staff. It always feels like a form of rejection, and they have no right to witness something so intimate as failure. For that reason, though, he equally can’t let it go. 

“Is that all you have to say?” falls out before he can stop it. Somehow, most of the sarcasm misses his tone, and he sounds more curious than anything. (Maybe he is.)

Ren nods, still watching the whirling leaves and the distant gray mountains. “I have nothing to add, Grand Marshal.”

Hux splays his hand in the space between himself and Ren, looks at the ceiling, and considers the deleterious consequences of calling the Supreme Leader a jackass within hearing of four officers, an enlisted speeder pilot, and a mining tycoon-turned-prison-boss. He’s decided against it, when he feels gentle pressure on the back of his left hand, still stretched taut across the middle of the seat.

A glance down finds Ren’s index finger tracing slow, silent spirals across the black synthleather of Hux’s glove, his gaze still transfixed out the viewport. For some reason Ren isn’t wearing his own gloves, and his skin looks nearly gray with the cold, his cuticles purplish and waxy. 

Hux purses his lips, then exhales and relaxes his hand, annoyance quenched as suddenly as it had come. Best let him do it. No use drawing attention.

The speeder slows as it reaches the rows of stark, low duraluminum structures that house the prisoners. They’re boxy and industrial, probably constructed elsewhere and shipped in fully wired and furnished. The walls are thin and unadorned: clearly no funds have been wasted on such trivialities as aesthetics or extra insulation. Firepits (all presently unlit) have been dug in the stiff, sallow grass outside every other dwelling, presumably the camp’s only morale-building activity. It’s mealtime, so the residences are deserted.

Dawlan points out a low, distant building for communal sonic showers as the speeder stops outside a taller, broader central structure, which Yenba unnecessarily explains is the mess hall.

Inside, the last of the workers appear to have only just settled down. The chow line is empty, and the rows of long tables are crowded. The fluorescents overhead glare off the silvered metal of the tabletops, which reflect the figures of the prisoners, warped blurs of drab color. The room is silent but for the sounds of chewing tough bread and slurping down thin soup.

Dawlan allows her guests to survey the scene. There’s little to expound on, and a pair of sergeants approach her, looking grave. After stilted and unnecessary half-bows to Ren, they address her in low tones. Ren stares out over the hall, taking in the slumped forms, the sharp elbows jostling for personal space.

“These are the remnants of their rebellion,” he says, after a moment. 

There’s little inflection, but it feels like a question. Hux answers him in the affirmative.

“And their children, they-- The young ones went into the trooper program.”

Hux nods. “The oldest of those should be combat-ready by now.” It’s been about six years. 

Ren wets his lips, considering. “Good,” he says. “It’s a better life than this.”

“Of course,” Hux replies. “The Order needs children.” He doesn’t care if that’s his father’s line, not really.

“I know,” says Ren.

Hux can contrive nothing to add to that, so he’s relieved when Dawlan turns back to himself and Ren, dismissing the sergeants.

“Sirs, you’ve come on the right day,” she says, a fresh stiffness to her bearing. “I assume you’ll be interested in observing how Planum Sebris deals with escape attempts.”

* * *

 

The detainees’ mealtime ended, half an hour’s time finds the entire prison assembled in a sprawling, packed-earth square on the back side of the mess hall. The wind is somewhat calmer, but somewhere above the cloud cover, the suns are sinking toward the horizon, cooling the air. 

In the midst of a line of officers, Hux clasps his hands behind his back to keep from hugging his greatcoat closer to himself, folding the lapels inward to provide an extra layer over his tunic. The fidgeting would be unseemly, and besides, he can handle it. Starkiller was colder by far than this. Beside him, Ren’s fists are clenched at his sides, skin bloodless and periwinkle from the locked joints and exposure. It’s just like him to neglect his gloves exclusively for a trip to the coldest world they’ve visited in months. (Ever the masochist.)

Hux tears his eyes from Ren’s self-imposed plight to the court martial in front of him. After summoning five pallid humans--all with the same surname--a stocky adjutant in a cap matching Hux’s orders a young man, clearly the son and brother of the other four, to step forward from his family.

He reads a list of charges: “Battery of First Order personnel, conspiracy to assassinate First Order personnel, obstruction of justice, participation in a violent assembly; and as of today, attempted breach of imprisonment, hindering facility productivity, and two additional counts of battery.” 

The adjutant clears his throat, swiping forward on his datapad. His breath hangs in the air between his dry lips and the screen. Hux can only see him in profile, but he’s likely fogged the thing. At any rate, he rubs at it twice. “For the crimes for which you have been sentenced to penal servitude as a civilian, and for those accrued today once a military prisoner, Ten Cuell, Preela Cuell, Selva Cuell, and Zinna Cuell are sentenced to death.”

The young man--Dallin Cuell--flinches visibly, biting his lip and screwing his eyes shut. The family members simply bow their heads. The camp is silent, no gasps of shock or horrified screams. They’re either too afraid or to accustomed to react. Judging by Dawlan’s air earlier, it’s the latter.

A pair of black-mantled troopers step forward from a formation behind the adjutant, to the left of Hux, Ren, and the line of officers, each bearing a Sonn-Blas SE-44C, the same gun hidden in Hux’s greatcoat, usually reserved for higher-ups. Maybe these are borrowed weapons, reserved exclusively for executions.

The troopers on either side of Dallin Cuell, steer him to the adjutant’s side to watch as the executioners order the other Cuells to their knees. The troopers with the pistols start out and work in, shooting the women on either end first. The bolts zing to their mark with practiced synchrony. The man and woman between them go just as quickly, and the troopers haul off the bodies. Dallin, shaking shoulders hunched, is shoved back into an unresponsive crowd. 

Hux finds himself duly impressed. It’s a ruthless, extreme approach, and at face value, even wasteful: eliminating five units of labor where one would have sufficed. However, the perceived increase in the cost of a failed breakout more than compensates for the loss. The cost of those few extra lives will keep thousands of other minds consigned to their work, infinitely better for business than if they were dreaming of escape. 

It’s a smart tactic, and Hux tells Dawlan as much. 

“It’s standard policy across all internment facilities on the planet,” she replies, proud tone belying the dip of her head at the praise.

“Supreme Leader--” Hux turns to Ren. “--don’t you ag--”

He stops short upon taking Ren in. His jaw is clenched, expression stormy. He stands tense and rigid. His gloved fingers curl and uncurl at his sides--an anxious, impatient tic Hux knows too well.

Hux lowers his voice to a whisper as officers bring the next condemned being’s spouse and parents forward. “What is it, Ren?” 

Ren doesn’t respond, doesn’t even look at him, just purses his lips more tightly and looks ahead. Hux follows his line of sight to the glinting barrels of the executioners’ blasters.

A quick recitation of crimes, identical to the last, then the Twi’lek is positioned to face their kneeling relations. All four are taciturn, as expressionless as possible, but the runaway weeps silently, eyes clenched shut. The shots are to the back of the skull again, clean and efficient. Three quiet whistles, and it’s over.

The officers haul off the bodies and shove the condemned back into the crowd, dragging forward the next set of vicarious defendants. Kneel, charges, face them, shots: Dawlan’s troops have honed this to a science.

As the fourth group is escorted forward, Hux ventures another glance at Ren. He’s gnawing his lip now, fingers working furiously. His eyes are closed, and his lips move silently.

“ _ Ren. _ ” Hux hisses. It’s only a matter of time before someone notices his discomfiture. He’s the Supreme Leader; he shouldn’t be acting... _ bothered _ . Not by this--he can’t look unimpressed with justice.

“ _ What _ .” Ren’s tone is clipped, and he still won’t make eye contact.

Hux lowers his voice, till he’s all but breathing in Ren’s ear. “Would it kill you to try to look engaged?”

“I  _ am  _ fucking engaged,” Ren spits back, as the list of charges begins. 

This family is notably more demonstrative. The condemned is distraught, openly sobbing. Her bony wrists jut out from under her cloak, and are covered in long red lacerations, as if she’s spent the hours since her capture scraping her skin with her fingernails. Her brother, sister, and adolescent daughter are just as shaken, shoulders trembling, shrieking curses to interrupt the Marshal’s spiel.

As the daughter is struck to silence her, there’s movement in Hux’s periphery--Ren turning on his heel. What the  _ fuck _ .

“Supreme--” he starts, but Ren’s already two paces out, heading back toward the officers’ barracks and in the general direction of the spaceport.

Dawlan is looking to Hux for explanation, blonde brows pinched in unvoiced concern.

Hux shakes his head, momentarily at a loss. “The Supreme Leader--” He fumbles for any excuse that doesn’t imply deficiency, some kind of weakness or disinterest on Ren’s part. “Supreme Leader Ren often keeps a… private schedule. I believe he may have been-- expecting a Holocall on our transport.”

Dawlan’s eyes flit across Hux’s face, probing for a lie. She finally purses her lips, clearly unsatisfied, but says merely, “Very well.”

There are two more sentencings and five more executions by the time Dawlan leaves Yenba behind and escorts Hux and the officers back to the military headquarters by the spaceport. Settled into a conference room, it’s briefings from her, from various economists, analysts, geologists, foremen, for the next two hours.

Hux absorbs little of the data, his mind fully saturated by  _ Ren _ . He isn’t sure whether to be furious or worried. The application synced with Ren’s tracker displays his location as in this building, an immense relief, but knowing Ren, that could change at any moment. Hux checks his datapad at intervals of five minutes, no matter who’s talking, to keep tabs on him, as well as on the off chance that both Ren would decide to use modern communication technology and that he himself would miss the alert for it.

By the time the last speaker, a trade and export specialist equipped with line graphs displaying ore production for the last decade, takes the floor, Hux is crossing and uncrossing his legs impatiently, glancing at his datapad at intervals of ten to thirty seconds. A knot has settled in the pit of his stomach, and if this weren’t the last of the briefers he’d just get up and leave.

Ren’s almost certainly fine, just caught up in his own dramatics, but the unknown gnaws at Hux’s mind. Not to mention the gripping urge to serve Ren a tirade for up and abandoning his duties. It won’t do to look flighty. Ren’s reputation for unpredictability precedes him everywhere he goes, and it isn’t proving easy to reshape.

As soon as the graphs disappear from the projector lens, Hux is out of his seat and off toward the building’s guest suites. His and Ren’s scant luggage had been delivered to separate lodgings upon their arrival, and Hux soon reaches the entrance of the suite assigned to himself. On his datapad, the red dot denoting Ren’s position pings brightly.

Hux extracts a code cylinder and scans for entry. The doors iris open into a high-ceilinged antechamber, which Hux breezes through. He shoves the hat in his pocket. Once he enters the open doorway to the bedroom, where Ren’s tracker was pinging, he turns immediately to a rack to shuck his coat.

He starts talking before he has both arms out. “What the fuck was that, Ren? Do you have any fucking idea how poor of form it is to turn tail in the middle of an official proceeding?” Hux straightens the coat, running a hand down its flank against lint and dust. “It just furthers the reputation we’re trying to re-configure. You can’t just go running off whenever the fit--” 

Hux turns, scans the room. And stops dead when he sees Ren: cross-legged on the floor, back against the bed, elbows on his knees. Hands steepled over his nose and mouth, shoulders trembling.

“Ren, what--” Hux starts, half-hushed, then crosses the floor to kneel beside him on the carpet. He risks a hand to Ren’s shoulder, lets his thumb massage a lazy circle where collarbone meets joint.

“Hey,” he murmurs, then adds, “What the hell is wrong?” His tone emerges far softer than he intends.

“I don’t know.” Ren takes a long, agonized sniffle of a breath, then looks up, drawing the backs of his hands across his eyes, across the sheen of tear tracks on his cheeks.

“Bantha shit,” Hux says. Ren always knows what he’s feeling and why. It’s part of his curse. “What is it?”

Ren inhales again, this time more mouth than nose. Tears are still falling freely, and he stares back down at his knees, still rubbing at his face. “I can’t stand it, Hux. I can’t- I can’t fucking stand it.”

“Stand what?”

“Being here. Seeing this. It’s usually fine. It shouldn’t-”

“What’s  _ it _ ?” Hux’s stomach feels hollowed out. Ren’s halfway to talking treason. “Our work here?”

“Yeah.” Ren swallows, throat muscles working. “The camp. The executions. The Force is swirling with- pain, and I just--” His shoulder heaves under Hux’s hand, and he half-coughs a sob. “It isn’t that I pity them. They’re Resistance. I know they deserve this. I just. Feel... what they’re feeling.”

“You’ve seen worse,” Hux reminds him. “You’ve  _ ordered  _ worse.”

“I know.”

“Then why is today--”  
  
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I hate it.”

_ Anything but this. Anything but his goddamn conscience.  _

“You hate what we’re doing?” It should come out angry, scornful. Instead, Hux sounds childish and vulnerable in his own ears, all hurt and surprise.

“No. I love what we’re doing. I love  _ you _ . I just-- hate this part. That it hurts.”

Hux swallows down,  _ So do I, darling _ , in favor of, “Why does it hurt?” Better to keep him talking, better to at least try to understand.

“It throws off the balance. Shit like this. And then this physically close to it, the proximity throws off  _ my _ balance. It’s like I’m being pulled--” He breaks off, shaking all over, and puts his face back in his hands.

“Hey,” Hux says. “Hey.” Just crouching next to him isn’t enough. Hux wants to hold him, envelop him, kiss the conflict out of his head. He pries Ren’s hands away from his face, and perfunctorily says, “Can I?” before straddling him, threading a leg between each of Ren’s arms and his waist, before Ren’s arms wrap around him, pull him close.

It isn’t comfortable. The tops of Ren’s boots--which he apparently failed to take off before collapsing--are digging into Hux’s ass. 

It should be flirtatious, should be foreplay, erections pressing against each other. Instead it’s pitiful, Ren crying silently into the front of Hux’s tunic, Hux with his chin on the crown of Ren’s head, running his hands helplessly through Ren’s hair. He works his fingers through the tangles, and hushes him, though he’s hardly making a sound.

“Hey,” he repeats. “Hey. What we’re doing is going to restore the balance, eventually.”

“Maybe,” Ren says, muffled by the fabric. “But right now it’s hell.”

An ugly, sympathetic knot forms in the pit of Hux’s stomach. His tunic is getting wet, and Ren is still trembling. “Ren,” he says, and leans back to tip Ren’s chin up. “You’re the fucking Supreme Leader. If it hurts you, order it to stop.”

“I can’t.” His voice quivers, and Hux can’t stand it. “I shouldn’t.” He pulls Hux close again. “You know we can’t.”

_ Gods. Fuck.  _ Anything but this. Hux is about to start compromising, and he can’t help himself.

“Ren,” he says, and draws back, taking Ren’s face between his hands. “Ren, look at me. Say the word, and I will personally withdraw all our forces. We’ll abandon the planet.”

“No. Hux--”

“Look at me. It isn’t--” Hux’s eyes prickle, and he clears his tightening throat. “It isn’t worth this. You’re falling to pieces.”

“I’m not.”

“ _ Ren _ .” Hux rubs his thumbs across Ren’s cheeks, through the teartracks, catching a fresh-falling drop in the seam between his skin and Ren’s. 

Ren looks down for a moment, at the angle of Hux’s legs on top of his.  “This is only temporary.”

“That’s a Snoke line.” Hux has heard it far too many times.

“I’ll be okay.”

“So is that.”

Ren gnaws his lip, looking down again. His arms are still wrapped loosely around Hux’s waist. “I mean it,” he says. “I won’t let this stop us.”

It hasn’t yet, of course, but Hux hasn’t seen him this bad in years, not since the early sessions with Snoke, and Hux’s slow, terrifying realization that he wasn’t strong enough to hold Ren together.

And for something as small as this to set him off--as ordinary as a few depressed prisoners and bloody executions, none of his estranged family members involved--it makes it seem like there’s a tally inside of him, building up like a chemical solution preparing to explode. 

Ren, however, at least seems aware of it this time, perhaps even optimistic about it (at least to Hux’s face). He’s stronger now than was the battered boy of the early days, the unmasked creature that kept crawling into Hux’s bed.

Hux tucks a strand of hair behind Ren’s left ear, lets his finger trace the tender shell of it. “So you’re telling me this won’t happen again?”

He isn’t. “The Force is in constant motion,” Ren says. “I can’t predict it.”

Hux purses his lips for a moment. There’s a solution to this, but it’s wrong and insulting. He knows Ren won’t hear of it, but it’s the only thing that makes sense, that would resolve this particular chronic crisis.  “Then maybe you’d better start staying on the  _ Finalizer _ ,” he says, softly.

“No!” Ren’s voice is so sharp it cracks. “I’m operational. Ground missions are...what I  _ do _ .” 

“You’re the Supreme Leader,” Hux counters, affecting supplication. “Maybe it’s time you--”

“Do you think it would do me any good to be trapped on board that ship? I’d lose my mind.” Ren holds his gaze, dark eyes something less than angry. “And we’d lose a lot more battles.”

“I know.” Hux keeps his right hand on Ren’s cheek, but moves the left to brush a lock of hair from Ren’s forehead. “I just hate to watch this.”

Across the room, Hux’s datapad dings inside his greatcoat. 

“Because watching this distracts you from the mission.” Ren might be intending a bitter edge, but his voice splinters again. It’s so goddamn pathetic Hux is almost humiliated on his behalf.

“No,” Hux says, over the device’s second chime. It isn’t quite a lie. The alert goes quiet, and Hux presses his lips to the crown of Ren’s head. 

They sit like that for a minute, Ren catching his breath in Hux’s chest, Hux’s nose and mouth buried in Ren’s hair. There’s something stupidly serene about it. But leave it to Ren to shatter the sense of calm.

“I should be stronger,” Ren says, “I should be able to handle this.”

It’s an exercise in probability lying to Kylo Ren--in terms both of whether he’ll detect it and how he’ll react if he does--so Hux says nothing at all. Better that than a hand to the throat for agreeing with him, or alternatively, for telling him the lie he wants to hear. Hux tilts his face up to rest his chin in Ren’s part. He lets Ren break the silence again.

“You had another meeting before the dinner.”

“I did,” Hux says.

“So why are you here?”

Hux works his fingers into Ren’s hair again. Isn’t it fucking obvious why? ( _ Hasn’t it always been?) _

“Because I--”

The pad chimes once more, louder now, cutting him off. 

Hux wills himself not to look at it, or to think about the rest of the day’s agenda. There was the meeting, then the state dinner, then an informal officers’ cocktail hour, which they’d planned to bow out of early. To come ruin the mattress Ren couldn’t even make it onto to cry.

Hux lifts his head and leans back. Ren looks up, meeting his eyes again.

“You should go,” he says

“Not if I’m needed here.”

“I’m okay.” Ren clears his throat, and shifts, almost as if he’s ready to get up and follow Hux. He’s currently in no state to do so. “I’ll be down in time for the drinks.”

“You could use one.”

* * *

About two hours later, the cocktail hour is underway in the low-ceilinged assembly hall of the base’s officer’s lodge. Yellow lighting gives the room a warm and otherworldly glow, soft compared to the harshness of the rest of the planet and the stark efficiency of Order architecture. Yenba hired a valachordist and a bartender for the occasion, and the visiting delegation and permanently stationed officers are managing to mingle--a roomful of potential rivals, wearing sidearms and fake smiles.

Functions like this were once anxiety-inducing, but at least provided the opportunity to size up the competition and score some favor with old-timers who liked to hear themselves talk. But in the years since Hux has been the highest-ranking officer in attendance, they’ve become tedious beyond belief. 

It doesn’t help that half the ex-Imperials manage to forget his rank after a few glassfuls, but the worst part is that these events are generally Ren-less. He’s been doing much better about shoulder-rubbing since taking the throne, but his absence (thus far) tonight stings. Hux has grown unused to feeling lonely in a crowd, and has been quietly holding out hope, distracted and less than present.

He’s half-engaged in a colonel’s tipsy recollections of the Otomok campaign when the conversation around them lulls, gazes drawn to the ballroom’s entrance. It doesn’t take long for heads to start bowing, a tacit show of deference to the Supreme Leader. Ren lifts a hand ( _ “as you were” _ ), and the hum of conversation and clink of glasses slowly swells again.

The colonel starts up again. “So then the bastards came up from behind the mesa. Now bolts are flying, one got so close it singed the insignia clear off my sleeve. We couldn’t see ‘em, just the plasma, and this big cloud of sand rushing toward--”

It hasn’t taken long for Ren to be accosted by a throng of sycophants. He’s just a few paces into the room, and is already surrounded by a crowd. He looks no more comfortable than he ever does in such a setting, but he’s speaking, nodding, even smiling.

Hux can never take his eyes off him when he’s like this-- _ on  _ and powerful and delicately controlled--but tonight it’s even more distracting than usual. He looks the part, stunning in dress uniform. He’s only worn the thing once before, to a diplomatic reception on Naboo about which Hux remembers little but alcohol par excellence and the inevitable fucking later that night. The outfit is the inverse of Hux’s white dress tunic, but similar to his daily fatigues, in everything but the gold embroidery where Hux has red and silver. Even the Order’s emblem is sewn that way; it looks unmistakably like a little sun, gleaming on Ren’s bicep.

Ren’s stiffly shaking hands with Dawlan’s wife. Then his lip twitches vaguely as the officers around him guffaw at some likely-inane quip. One of the foremen catches his eye, and he’s focused and intent. Asking questions. Hux can tell by the tilt of his head. He’s the center of the room, half the crowd clamoring for his attention. He’s got product in his hair, and his curls catch the light.

Though he looks far from happy, there’s no trace of the crying mess of an ex-Jedi Hux comforted mere hours ago. He’s radiant. And so much stronger than he thinks he is.

Hux resists a sudden, gripping urge to part the crowd and approach Ren, settle a hand in the crook of Ren’s elbow--stake his claim.  _ Mine _ , it would say to the partygoers.  _ Mine  _ to the High Command contingent.  _ Mine  _ to the Order, to the Resistance, to every quadrant of the galaxy where the Order reigns, and equally to the rest, soon to fall before them. Before Ren. Before  _ this  _ Ren. 

Hux loves him, he realizes, with an almost passive objectivity, as he makes his excuses to the still prattling colonel and heads for the open bar. (Yenba’s too generous a host.)

“Give me another Johrian.” Hux sloshes the finger of turquoise liquid left in the bottom of his own tumbler, and the bartender, a local looking unimpressed, complies.

Glasses in each hand, Hux takes advantage of a momentary staving-off of the throng around Ren to jostle his way toward him.

“Supreme Leader,” he says, at Ren’s right elbow. As Ren turns, his eyes wander down Ren’s figure, appreciating the tailored lines of the uniform all over again at closer proximity. 

“Grand Marshal.” 

Hux can’t help noticing the change in Ren’s expression upon seeing him—the sudden spark in his eyes, the playful quirk of his lip. He wordlessly proffers the whiskey.

The pleased expression falters and disintegrates as quickly as it had come. “I shouldn’t,” Ren says, voice low. “Not with the Force... like it is today.”

“That’s exactly why you  _ should _ .”

“Hux—“ 

Hux cuts off Ren’s protest. “Exactly how miserable did you want to be this evening?” He all but shoves the tumbler into Ren’s hand.

Ren rolls his eyes, but wraps his fingers around it and takes a short sip. He closes his eyes for a moment, and Hux knows he’s enjoying the burn of it. When he opens his eyes, he’s smiling again, contented. 

He tips his head just slightly, so his lips nearly brush Hux’s ear. “I love you,” he says, for the second time today. 

A shipping company rep catches Ren’s eye before Hux can respond, but he turns the words over and over, letting them wrap around his mind like a planetary shield, shining and impenetrable. 

Fuck the foremen, fuck the ore, fuck the exports.  _ “I love you.”  _ ( _ Mine.)  _ Hux is the richest man in the galaxy. 

* * *

About an hour and a half later, Ren extricates himself from the mire of sycophants. Hux notices immediately--it isn’t like he could take his eyes off him, even if he tried--and follows him out as soon as decorum allows.

All the way to the guest-quarters side of the building, his dress uniform feels stifling. He can’t get the image of Ren out of his head--Ren with the whole room ( _ the whole galaxy _ ) wrapped around his little finger; with his uniform sleeves clinging too tightly to his biceps. 

Hux doesn’t have to check the tracker to know he’ll find Ren where he left him earlier. He scans his cylinder at the door of his own suite, and it slides back. He cuts through the antechamber to find Ren in the bedroom, in front of the mirror with his hands clenched. Fully clothed.

An unsanctioned wave of disappointment washes briefly over Hux. Maybe Ren’s finally acquired the ability to school his expression against the misery. Maybe he left early because the Force kicked back in. Maybe he just needs company, not sex.

“I moved my stuff in here,” he says, nodding toward a standard-issue black rucksack before turning to Hux. He runs a hand through his hair, and that shouldn’t be so  _ fucking  _ obscene.

“Good,” Hux manages, wanting. Ashamed of wanting. 

Ren’s answering smirk is a sort of lifeline. “Including this.” He uncurls his fist and sets a bottle of lube on the desk beside him. In two steps, he’s closed the distance between them. “I didn’t forget.”

Hux resists the urge to thank him. At least he doesn’t have to fall at his feet and beg for his cock. He assumes the entitled tone Ren tends to find appealing, then raises his eyebrows and runs a hand down Ren’s neck as he speaks. 

“Well. I’m glad to hear the Force didn’t confuse  _ all  _ of your priorities.” His hand stills on Ren’s chest, and he manages not to claw at the fabric.

“Nothing could do that.” Ren’s voice is low, the rich, almost velvety intonation that he generally reserves for sex. He raises a hand to Hux’s waist, long fingers nearly encircling it. His hand feels too warm, too heavy, a fucking glede, and Hux wants to be branded with it.  “How do you want me?”

Hux slips his hand down Ren’s chest to grip his belt. “I want you to take me.” Heat’s pooling in his groin.

Ren has the audacity to look amused. “You  _ what _ ? Why?”

“ _ Why _ ? Look at yourself, you’re…”

“I look ridiculous.” Ren’s fingers gently massage Hux’s waist, the motion almost distracted. “I look like you dressed me.”

Hux ignores the fact that he more or less had. “So undress to spite me.”

Ren grins, a slow, unsteady thing that creeps across his face like the dawn. “You really want me to--”

“Yes,” Hux says, aware of how desperate he sounds--the keen of his voice, the breathlessness. It isn’t as if he can help it--he’s hardening, cock pressing taut against his jodhpurs. “I want you on me, inside me. All of you.”

Ren flushes, hopefully with desire. “Are you too tired to do me, or--”

Hux cuts him off, impatient with the theatrics. “Please just fuck me.”

“‘Please’?” Ren tilts an eyebrow, and the corners of his mouth twitch like he’s about to burst out laughing. “It’s not very often I get a  _ please _ .”

Hux sighs, but can’t quite manage to roll his eyes. “Shut up before I change my mind,” he says, and cups Ren’s face to pull him into a kiss, slotting their hips together. 

Ren responds ravenously, all warm, wet lips and the lingering burn of Johrian blue. His tongue teases Hux’s lips, and Hux opens for him willingly, sucking in air before Ren’s filled him, moving boldly, deliciously. Hux doesn’t take his hands off Ren’s face, just traces his thumb lightly over the scar, again and again. 

This dress uniform is far too hot, and Ren’s is far too many layers. He finally drops his hands to slip them under Ren’s tunic and undershirt. Ren’s skin is searing hot.

Ren pulls back for a moment. “You really want this?” he says, voice thick and low and electric. His fingers hover over Hux’s belt buckle.

“Of course I do.” Hux leans in long enough to drag his teeth across Ren’s lower lip, eliciting a sigh, then slips his hands from under Ren’s clothing to unclasp his belt buckle. Hux should be mindful of the tracker--for some reason he still wore  _ this belt  _ with his dress uniform--but he lets it fall to the floor.

Then Ren does the same with his belt, and Ren’s hands are beneath his tunic, and Hux’s are back beneath his. They work off the top half of each other’s clothing between urgent, fevered kisses, until they’re both half-naked and panting.

Ren’s chest heaves, all the scarred, chiseled, intolerable mass of it. His eyes are bright, on fire, and his hair is mussed from the graceless undressing.  He’s flushed high on his cheeks, and he’s smiling. 

Hux can’t stand it. “Fuck, you’re beautiful,” he says, before he can stop himself. 

Ren closes the fractional difference between them, and Hux tangles his fingers in his hair. He lets Ren walk him toward the wall behind, lets his fingers slip down to trace Ren’s neck, his arms, until they fold around Hux’s own waist, then slides his fingers under Ren’s waistband. Ren makes a startled sound in the back of his throat and pulls back for air. Fingers trembling, Hux undoes the black trousers, lets them fall so Ren can slip out of them.

He’s trembling all over, like some stupid virgin concubine, but can’t bring himself to care as Ren kicks the jodhpurs aside and makes quick work of the briefs beneath. Fucking hell, he’s as hard as Hux is, underside of his cock fiercely red against his pale torso.

Hux fumbles with his own trousers, but manages, working them down until they’ve fallen around his feet.

Ren pulls him close again, sets his hands on Hux’s hips to fold the waistband of Hux’s underwear. Hux can feel his pulse in his groin. Ren bows his head to murmur into Hux’s ear. “Tell me you want this.” 

Hux covers Ren’s hands with his own. “How many times do I have to?”

“One more time.” Ren’s breath is hot on his skin, and Hux hears the catch of emotion in the back of hs throat. Ren’s fingers slip further down, meeting skin beneath the fabric of the underwear, nearly perfectly aligned with the seams on the sides.

“Just--” Hux hisses a breath, heart thudding in his ears. “--take me, damn it.”

Between both their hands, Hux’s briefs are soon around his ankles, and a part of him wants to turn around and let Ren in just like this--unlubed, against the wall, with his dress uniform pooled around his feet like a snowdrift.

“Is this how you want it?”

Hux isn’t sure if he’s projecting the thought clearly enough for Ren to overhear it, or if Ren’s merely working on assumption. He manages to shake his head. “No.” Adrenaline has set his voice quivering. “On the bed. On my back.”

“Good,” Ren says, and stupidly, inexplicably, kisses the tip of his nose before wrapping his arms under Hux’s thighs and carrying him to the still-made bed. It must be the Force that shucks the comforter from the mattress before Ren lays him on the sheets, that calls the lube to Ren’s hand once he’s kneeling over him.

Ren opens it, squeezes a generous amount of the gel onto his fingertips. “Do you want me to--” he starts.

“Yes,” Hux says, shamefully hoarse, his own cock flush against his stomach, pink and almost pulsing. “Do yourself and then just--”

Ren smirks. “Okay, okay. You’re in a hurry. I love it.” He takes himself in hand, runs his massive hands up and down his length, fingers sticky with the gel. 

Hux twists his fingers into the sheets, a feeble, steadying gesture. If he touched himself now, watching Ren, he’d get off before Ren could get a single finger in. It takes an eternity before Ren’s coated his fingers again, moves his hand between Hux’s spread legs.

“Ready?”

“I’m certain I’ve expressed that sentiment.”

“Have you now?” Ren says, and circles his rim, the sensation a shock of pleasure.

Before Hux can conjure another impatient retort, Ren’s first finger is in without warning. Hux hisses out a sigh. Ren’s finger is cold, and the lube is cold, but Hux sinks around it comfortably, biting back ecstasy as Ren stretches him.

“Feel alright?” Ren leans forward to nip at Hux’s thigh, index finger still buried inside him.

The suddenness of Ren’s mouth on sensitive skin startles appreciation out of him. “Fuck yes.”

“Good,” Ren says, and again unceremoniously inserts the second finger. He draws them both out, then back in again, warmer now, stretching Hux wider. Hux claws at the sheets, spreads his hips wider, till the joints nearly ache with it.

When Ren pulls out, a choked, keening sound escapes the back of Hux’s throat. 

“So needy tonight,” Ren murmurs, bending to peck Hux’s lips. “That’s unexpected.”

Hux could say the same, but Ren’s effect on him has never been predictable. Nor would he love him if it were. “Get on with it,” he says, but loops his arms around Ren’s neck.

When Ren enters, Hux takes him to the base. The flare of pain dissipates almost instantly into bliss as Ren settles into him, hits the best possible place. He gasps, and Ren pulls out, then thrusts back in, again and again and again, each movement more forceful, more confident, as Hux arcs his hips into him, wraps his legs around his waist, a wordless plea for  _ more, more, more _ . ( _ Of you _ .)

He’s crying out, but can’t even manage Ren’s name, just inane, carnal sounds. They embarrass the tiny fragment of his mind not overpowered by  _ Ren _ , and the absurd size of him, and the unmistakable glitter of tears in his eyes, even now, on top of Hux.

“I’m close,” Ren breathes, after forever and not long enough. “I’m close, I--” His eyes sink shut, and his full lips part obscenely. It’s the warm, saturated sensation of Ren’s release inside him that pushes Hux over the edge. His vision dissolves to sparks, and he’s leaking onto his own stomach.

Rey doesn’t let him finish.

.

.

Hux opens his eyes to see her red-faced, eyes narrowed nearly to points. He’s panting and flushed, unsure if the heat is the memory’s residue or just the withering red flower of humiliation.

“Explain yourself,” Rey demands. She’s blushing too, but in a shy, secondhand way, and seems to be forcing herself to make eye contact with Hux. “What did that have to do with the purpose of these sessions?”

“That was--” Hux says, pausing to inhale shakily, “--the last time we ever did it...like that.”

“And that is relevant to me how?”

Hux straightens his posture, leans back as much as possible. “You didn’t have to keep watching.”

Rey clenches her jaw for a moment. “These are not conjugal visits,” she replies. “You should have ended it when it stopped...matching my interests.”

Hux doesn’t know how to tell her that he couldn’t. That the memory felt less like a thing that belonged to him, that he could control, than its own living entity, unfurling into something bigger than his own mind. 

And of course there was the pleasure. Surely he deserves this much for breaking himself open for Rey’s perusal.

“It wasn’t irrelevant,” is what he says. “There’s something else.”

“I don’t want to hear about the clean-up.”

“I swear it isn’t that.”

Rey looks at him for a long, probing moment. Her embarrassment has faded and she looks on edge. “Very well,” she says.

.

.

The next morning, Hux awakens to the brass strains signaling 0630 on the base. He hasn’t woken up to that since Arkanis, and he’s torn between shoving his head under the pillow to muffle it and leaping out of bed into a full salute. The notes have begun to fade before he registers the inevitable soreness from last night and the empty space next to him in the bed. Wincing, he turns from his side and sits up.

“Morning.” Ren’s sitting in the armchair beside the window, and he turns from the stark tundra outside to study Hux. He’s holding a mug of caf, and he takes a slow sip from it.

The rich scent of the caf mingles with the stringent, unmistakable aroma of Tarine tea. Hux turns to note a matching mug on the night table beside him, string and tag dangling over the lip.

“Morning,” he says, and doesn’t pick it up. 

This isn’t right. Ren’s generally out for at least a solid six hours after a fuck like that, especially when he’s the one who did the work. Combined with the rest of yesterday’s events, he should be sleeping like a corpse. But he’s apparently awake, and having droids deliver caf and tea, and staring out the window with his voice sounding detached from his body.

Hux shivers. It’s fucking freezing in here, and gooseflesh stands up under his skin. He scans the room for his robe, then swings his legs over the side of the bed and crosses the room for it. He chafes his arms against the cold until he’s slipped into it.

He isn’t sure what to say to Ren, but his feet turn him toward the window, rather than back to the bed. Ren’s fully dressed, and watching him. 

“I’m having it destroyed,” Ren says, abruptly, as Hux stops a step from the armrest. 

“What?”

“The prison.” Ren takes another swallow of caf, then glances back to the window. A brown leaf briefly strikes the pane. “As soon as we clear the province, it’s gone.”

Hux’s lips work without silently, without his permission, groping for a line of questioning. This is nonsensical even for Ren. It computes with neither yesterday’s Force-induced empathy nor his confident rebound.

“The prison?” he finally manages. “Why? It’s the most productive quarry on the planet. We can’t just go--”

Ren’s head snaps back toward him. He cuts him off. “Did I  _ say _ the quarry?” He pauses, but not long enough for Hux to summon a response. “I said the prison.”

“Are you sure you don’t mean closing it?”  _ And releasing the detainees to harangue our government here?  _ That’s an almost equally miserable alternative, but it at least aligns with the cause of yesterday’s hysterics.

“I’m wiping it out,” Ren says. “Every fucking rebel there.”

“Ren,” Hux says, and closes the final step between himself and Ren’s chair. He sets his hand cautiously on the armrest, beside Ren’s elbow, but doesn’t touch him. He clears his throat and turns on his best politician’s tone. “There’s no need for that. It’s a productive facility. Imagine the slowdown of building new employee accommodations, re-staffing. They’re more useful to us alive.”

“It’s no worse than firing Starkiller,” Ren retorts, standing. The five centimeters he has on Hux don’t quite let him loom over him, but he’s trying. 

Hux holds his gaze, fumbling through his sleep-fogged mind for a counterargument. They haven’t started a morning like this in years, and it’s ridiculous and terrifying at once. “You know why Starkiller had to be,” he manages, trying to tamp down the exhaustion in his voice. “And because of it, our bargaining position has changed. You have nothing left to prove.”

“You saw what that place did to me. How weak it made me. This is the only way to end that.” There’s no bleariness in Ren’s eyes, nor his tone. Maybe he didn’t sleep at all, and he’s been sipping caf and stewing on his damn feelings all night. 

All night thinking, and  _ this  _ is the solution he arrives at. 

“The problem is you,” Hux says, and means it, “not a model labor camp. Those people are doing their jobs. They’re serving the Order. You can’t--”

“Hux, it’s done.” Ren’s gaze is flinty, and every muscle in his body looks tense, daring Hux to argue.

Hux purses his lips, weighing his response. He can’t just let this go. “Is this really going to make you stronger,” he says, more sharply than he intends, “killing off the thing that hurts you?”

Ren says nothing, so Hux presses, perhaps unwisely. 

“Has it ever worked? Did it work with the planetary massacres?” He tries a lower blow. “With the Jedi students?”

Ren’s eyes flash. “Stop talking.” 

Hux can’t. “How about with your father?”

“Shut up!” Ren’s curled his fist at his side, and Hux half expects him to raise it to pinch his throat. But instead he shuts his eyes and slowly extends the fingers, releasing them as he breathes in. When he goes on, his voice has cooled. “I called in the airstrike,” he says, as coldly as Ren can. “We’re done with this.”

The movement of the Force Hux senses is almost more violent than the choking would be. It’s a blow to his mind, trying to silence him. It works, for a moment, and once it passes he realizes further argument is futile. He falls back on logistics. “And what about our officers, they’re evacuating?”

“No.” Ren sounds as sure about this as he did the rebels. “They’re part of the system. Leave them in place, and they’ll set up the same thing all over again.”  _ The same thing that shook him to his core. _ “And they were lying about the production numbers anyway.”

Hux doesn’t take that particular bait. “So we pull them, demote them. We can’t murder them any more than we can the prisoners. We can’t just bombard our own territory.” He pauses for a moment, breathes in. “What about when the word spreads? We’re bombing out labor camps--that’ll set every inmate in the galaxy on edge. This is ridiculous,” he says. “You aren’t thinking properly You can’t--”

“Hux.” Ren steps forward to stand chest to chest with him. His voice is low, and eerily controlled. “It’s  _ done. _ ”

Hux studies his bare feet under the robe’s hem, focuses on the cold seeping into the soles from the synthstone floor and the duracrete foundation beneath. Ren won’t be reasoned with. He inhales, looks back up. “What are we going to do about the mine, then?”

“You’ll figure it out,” Ren says. “You always do.” He closes his eyes and dips his head forward, catching Hux’s lips in a voracious kiss that’s clearly intended more to shut him up than turn him on.

Hux keeps his eyes open, passively aware of the pinch of Ren’s teeth teasing his lower lip, but surveying the furniture behind Ren.

He thinks of the override.

There absolutely has to be an override--Ren isn’t thinking clearly, this strike can  _ not  _ happen. 

_ The override. _ It’ll have to come from Ren, or at least from his frequency. A countermand from Hux will only postpone it, and Ren’s unlikely to entertain an official appeal when he won’t even discuss alternative options in the bedroom, with Hux half-naked and all but begging him.

Ren’s tongue parts Hux’s lips, and Hux lets him probe the inside of his mouth, warm pressure tracing palate, teeth, his own tongue. He returns nothing. 

Ren’s datapad is on the night table on his side of the bed. The override will have to come from there.

Ren pulls back after a few unresponsive moments. His gaze flickers across Hux’s face, brows pinched, blurring the line between uncertain and insecure. “What?” he murmurs, as if it weren’t obvious what’s wrong.

Hux says nothing, just shakes his head and leans up to press his lips to Ren’s forehead. 

“You understand,” Ren says, when Hux withdraws. It’s something less than a question.

“Yes,” Hux replies, “Supreme Leader.”

Ren smiles thinly at the last bit, tacked on for the sake of subordination.  _ I may not agree, but I’ll support you.  _ It’s what Ren likes to hear.

“Go meditate,” Hux says, after a moment. He makes a point to look at Ren, not over his shoulder at the datapad. “I’ll pack up.”

“I’m okay.”

“No, you aren’t.” Hux lifts a hand and traces the swell of Ren’s lower lip with his thumb. “Go meditate. You need it.”

Hux drops his hand, and Ren nods once, accepting. “I’ll be in the antechamber.”

Once he’s out of the room, Hux spends a few minutes idly folding clothes to make sure Ren isn’t going to burst back in. After he decides the coast is clear, he rushes to the opposite side of the bed and switches on Ren’s datapad. 

“Mother _ fucker _ ,” Hux murmurs. It’s asking for Ren’s fucking biometric; of course it’s asking for his fucking biometric. 

Okay. This a third-gen model. Several versions behind Hux’s 5.3, but he still knows the specs. 

Third-gen. There’s a built-in commanding officer failsafe keyed to a code cylinder. His regular uniform--cylinders still attached--is in the wardrobe, and he immediately flings it open to extricate the right key. 

The datapad’s cam reads it--and pulls up a numerical keypad. Fuck. 

No. 

No, it’s fine. 

Hux knows this too, or at least he once did. First six digits of the coordinates of Mustafar. Ren set it early in his time with the Order, seldom has to use it, and has never changed it.

The keypad dissolves into a single, sparse screen of applications, and Hux taps the Holomail icon.

> _ New message _

_ >>To: Finalizer_Missile_Command_Staff _

_ >>>CC: GML_A_HUX _

_ Please disregard the earlier request for an airstrike on Planum Sebris. There has been a change in policy. Do not conduct the strike.  _

_ -K.R. _

Hux’s finger hovers over  _ Send _ . Wait. 

_ Disregard earlier request for airstrike on Planum Sebris. There has been a change in policy. Do not conduct the strike.  _

_ Direct all responses to this message to GML Hux. Do not include my Holo frequency. _

_ -KR _

Hux’s finger hovers over  _ Send _ . He inhales and taps, encrypting it with Ren’s Holo signature before releasing it into the ether. He immediately navigates to  _ Sent Mail _ , and erases the evidence.

.

.

It takes slightly longer for the memory to end than it ought, the dark behind Hux’s eyes lingering for an instant after he means to open them. The chord vibrates through his skull, far-off but resonant. He clings to it as the whiteness of the conference room resolves around him. 

His sweat from earlier has cooled and dried on his skin, leaving him clammy. The cooling unit drones on uninterrupted, but Hux catches the lampdisk flicker with his eyes wide open.

“Not finished,” Rey says, not all the way to accusing, but certainly disapproving.

Hux blinks, and talks over the tinnitus. “They acknowledged it immediately. Only to me, as instructed. I checked again after we’d left for [capital], and the camp was still standing.”

Rey purses her lips, then asks, half-hushed, “What happened after he found out?”

“It never came up again,” Hux replies, honestly.

“ _ Did _ he ever find out?”

As best he can with his wrists bound, Hux shrugs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: Hux and Ren visit a canon-typical (Imperial-style) FO labor camp for political detainees; there are multiple executions by blaster.


	5. The Boy You Trained

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No additional content warnings this chapter--just heed the tags, as always :)

What Hux doesn’t tell Rey is that he made a mistake.

It takes a while to sink in, once he returns to his cell, the notion that this is _regret._ It drills into him slowly, like a laser through the crust of some intractable planet, burning steadily deeper, through shifting layers of tectonic plates and magma, before striking solid core.

And shattering it.

_He made a mistake._

It felt like mere emptiness--an unfortunate aftereffect of reliving his memories, having Ren taken from him all over again each time he returns to reality--until it didn’t. Until his brain looped it back enough times for him to isolate and analyze every detail, weigh all alternatives objectively, as if watching the readouts of a training sim he wrote but didn’t try out.

It’s paralyzed him on his cot, legs folded loosely under him, staring blankly at the white wall opposite. He hasn’t so much as touched his dinner, much less his flimsipad or one of the novels.

He’s made many mistakes in his life, but never a strategic blunder like this. If he were a cadet, and this were a training exercise, he’d have possibly been spaced for it, or at least reconditioned and placed in a trooper corps. _Unfit_ , his file would have read. _Unfit for decision-making responsibilities. Reassigned to infantry._

He twists his index finger into the rough coverlets, twisting  until he’s cut off circulation and he can feel the tip going purple, the pulse thumping through it, contained. It feels like there’s more life in that one finger than the rest of his body. It hurts, after a moment, and he deserves it.

He was an idiot.

He should have taken Ren’s arm at the party, should have both stopped the executions and allowed the airstrike. Should have kept talking over the chime of his datapad and finished the conversation.

_“So why are you here?”_

He’d been wrapped around Ren, holding him, soothing him, offering to give up a whole fucking planet for him. He’d thought it was obvious why.

_“Because_ \--” he started, and might have even said the rest.

He should have said anything in that moment. Anything that would have bought Ren a momentary semblance of balance. Of _relief._ He’d started to--even offered up Hays Minor as a sacrifice--but it hadn’t been enough.

And then he’d had the balls to try _lying_ to Ren the next morning, overriding him as if politics and resources and public representation mattered more than his inner peace.

Perhaps they should have, but all the conductive ore in the galaxy wouldn’t warm Hux in this cell, nor is even one of those surviving officers here to keep him company. (They certainly never loved him.)

Nonetheless, canceling the strike was _rational_ on Hux’s part, and that’s certainly why Ren never brought it up. To do would have been to admit his mistake--the one thing Ren predictably never did.

But of course it’s impossible he didn’t sense it, or rather sense the absence of it--the steady tide of the Force where he was expecting the wailing maelstrom of a thousand fiery deaths.

He might have been counting on them--that pain, the power that accompanies having inflicted it--to fuel him, to cast his anchor a fathom deeper into the bottomless abyss of the Dark. It might have been the measure that saved him--that held him down just a little longer--and Hux prevented his casting it.

And for what? A desperate attempt not to skew an already volatile political balance. He’d dabbled--as always--into a part of Ren’s life he could never fully understand, no matter how many explanations he’d begged for, and sometimes even received. It was never enough.

And there it is: the unshakable conviction  that _you could have done something_. Should have. Fixed him. (Saved him.)

Regret erodes the back of Hux's mind like a canker, constantly prodded by stabs of memory. It’s self-inflicted, except for when it isn’t--when Rey’s drawing it out of him, or it’s ringing through his skull, or when the phantom pain where Ren belongs dredges it up unbidden, hulking and massive and broken, like a monstrous reptilian fossil better left under layers of mud.

But it’s too late now--the silt is shifting, and the skeleton surfaces: here a rib, there a femur; a single sharp tooth poking out of the quagmire.

To recall the phantom pain is to bring it blazing back to the fore of his mind, prominent as a missile’s arc in the drabness of his cell. It sears through the gray, empty _nothing_ between the dimming of the hallway lampdisks and the reluctant embrace of sleep. It strikes him in the chest and the head, exacerbated by the _realness_ of what he showed Rey today (the whiskey on Ren’s breath, the light in his hair, the slide of his cock and the tenderness of his lips).

It’s an untreatable malady, a chronic illness that cannot and will not dissipate. The only cure is the one Rey’s offered him--the permanent escape--and here on his cot, with his head in his hands, with his grief pounding through his skull and clenching between his ribs, he wants only one thing more than oblivion.

And he wants hopelessly. Ravenously. Desperately and futilely.

(Ren is _gone_.)

It’s only his own head that wants to protest. That unearths memories, ever stronger but never an adequate substitute for--hell, hardly resembling the faintest shadow of--the real thing.

They’ll never be enough.

(It aches to know that.)

He clenches his eyes shut, groping in the blackness for anywhere quiet, somewhere not painless (that would be too much to hope for), but at least numb. He clings to it, parrying every pointless thought as if defending a contested patch of turf on a hard-won world.

Eventually, Hux’s muscles relax, and the dark takes over, with the temporary, disoriented numbness of losing consciousness.

Unfortunately, he dreams.

_He’s on his knees, Ren down his throat to the base. It shouldn’t feel this good. Ren shouldn’t taste like a banquet. Heat shouldn’t be pooling in his groin, under the uniform trousers he hasn’t even taken off, and they certainly shouldn’t fit together like this, like two pieces of a puzzle, like an asteroid and a black hole._

_But the thought falls silent as Hux looks up at Ren. He’s magnificent even from this angle._

_Ren, with his eyes closed and his head thrown back, smiling between moans and meaningless encouragements as he fucks Hux’s throat raw._

Damn it, why did you look at him. _Hux is undeniably aroused now. Ren’s hands are in his hair, alternately tugging loose strands and massaging his scalp. He’s mussing the pomade, as if that mattered now._

_Hux moves his lips, his tongue, hollowing his cheeks as much as possible._

_“Hux.” Ren’s voice cracks on the harsh consonants, and Hux is over the edge. “Hux. You’re good, you’re so fucking good, you--”_

_The babble shouldn’t make something in his chest swell to bursting, shouldn’t undo him._

_It’s over. He’s as good as spent. It’s stupid. He’s going to come in his stupid jodhpurs, completely untouched._

_Ren sighs, and Hux’s vision goes white._

Ears buzzing with a low chord, he opens his eyes to the dusk of the prison sleep cycle, and he knows the erection is a hopeless cause almost as soon as he remembers where he is.  His hand strays involuntarily to his waistband, but he withdraws it almost as quickly. He can’t risk ruining his bedding, can’t face requesting it be laundered. And his cot is in full view of the transparent cell door.

Fuck.

He has this much dignity left: He sits up delicately, right hand splayed around the side of the cot, left propping himself up. He swings his legs over the edge of the metal frame and shuffles to the corner of his cell serving as a fresher.

Once out of view of any passing guards, he steps out of the slacks entirely, then the standard-issue briefs beneath them, again to avoid the need for emergency laundering. His cock springs out, almost fully erect, and the pink of it is visible even in the dim lighting. He jerks off silently and efficiently, and tries to think of nothing at all.

* * *

The next morning, Hux allows himself a sheet in his flimsipad before breakfast, a distraction for his hands while he tries to order his thoughts above the lingering musical pulse. He dots the page with the tightest, most minuscule rows and columns he’s yet done. When he connects them, the result should be stunningly intricate. For now, he dots and thinks.

This can’t go on: the vivid dreams, the unbidden memories. Remembering Ren, talking about him, should be _helping_ , not making Hux more miserable. The thoughts alone are unbearable, but then there’s the unpredictable tinnitus he’s acquired, the Force-chord. It isn’t a proper ringing in his ears, more like a constant hum, deep and low. Sometimes he feels it in his sternum, rather than his skull. It would be comforting--something like the thrum of a ship’s engine under his feet, normal and almost unnoticeable, if not for the fact that it comes from inside his own head. It’s therefore nothing to cling to.

If it keeps up, it’s going to drive him mad, which wouldn’t be particularly difficult in this place, but fortunately he’s under an agreement specifying it _can’t_ go on forever. He’s already done more for Rey than either of them expected. She must have an end point in mind.

Hux finishes his row of dots and moves to the next, about half a centimeter below it, each new point perfectly parallel to the one above, a single press of the stylus’ point, no bigger than a freckle. Ren’s moles would dwarf them, and Hux’s hand slips. He curses both the thought and the mistake.

He can’t go on like this. Rey owes him a timeline.

* * *

 “A progress report?” Rey says that afternoon. She has the topknot again, and her chair is pushed back from the table. She leans forward in it, however, back slanted at a tight angle, brows knitted. “What do you mean by that?”

Hux bites back a snide remark on the disarray of Republican personnel affairs. “I’ve shown you, I believe, seven memories thus far, yet you’ve given me no indication of how much they’ve helped you, nor what information gaps remain. I would like to know what else is expected of me.”

Rey gives him a long, keen look, then sighs. “I suppose that’s fair.” She half-rises to scoot her chair forward, legs squeaking on the tile as she drags it. She reaches the table and sets her elbows on it, spread wide as her legs beneath.

“All right,” she says, ticking off on her fingers. “So far I’ve seen several different sides of Kylo’s conflict while he was Supreme Leader. There were the childhood memories and attachments that pulled him toward the light, like with Chandrila. On Falleen and Ganthel, I saw the Force give him a sort of vague foresight, where he could tell what was going to fail. Then I saw the same kind of doubt on Hays Minor, even though he kept hating it.” She holds Hux’s gaze. “Any corrections?”

“None.”

“Good. But you want to know what I make of it, don’t you?” Rey twists her lips, and taps her fingers silently against the tabletop for a moment. “I don’t have enough to base any real conclusions on yet, but so far I’m seeing this...sense of hopelessness, I think. Where he had to keep fighting the light to make progress, and sometimes he let it win, and he hated that. Hated himself for that, I mean. So he would lash out against that, sometimes at you, sometimes at...whatever the problem was?”

The unexpected interrogative, like she’s asking for assurance, takes Hux aback, but he summons a response soon enough. “Yes, that’s how I understood it,” he says, patiently.

“Right.” Rey shifts in her seat, but it’s more like settling in than fidgeting. She looks at Hux keenly for several moments, as if waiting for a follow-up question.

He has one, of course; has had it since the moment she proposed this and the repugnant horror of the imagined treatise _Kylo Ren: Disambiguation_ burrowed into Hux’s skull.

“And if I may ask,” he says, delicately, “what is it--exactly--that you plan to do with this information?”

“I’ve already told you I plan to train students one day,” Rey replies, all but automatically. She tenses slightly, something defensive in the rigidity.

Hux purses his lips briefly, weighing her reaction before continuing, “But how will Ren’s... _story_ factor into that? Is it just for your personal reference, is there going to be a learning module about him...?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Rey says, too crisply, “and that isn’t part of our deal.”

“I’m aware.” Hux offers her his best excuse for a wry smile. “Just lingering professional curiosity.”

“About training program design?” Rey very nearly sneers at that, the expression contorting her delicate features into something feral. “Rest assured, mine will look _nothing_ like what you did to Fi--” She stops herself. “--to those kids.”

It’s the most personal rise he’s gotten out of her since they started meeting, but Hux doesn’t want to probe it. He isn’t sure he cares.

“Skywalker’s didn’t sound so terribly different,” is what he says, partial truth, partial challenge. “Just substantially less satisfying.”

“Mine won’t be like Luke’s,” Rey retorts.

“So you _won’t_ take children from their homes, raise them for war, then tell them the real conflict is in their own heads?”

Hux’s knowledge is secondhand and partial surmise, the image that emerged beneath the connected dots of Ren’s terse reflections, his off-hand comments. His nightmares. The thought of it has never failed to spark Hux’s rage. Ren was meant for infinitely more than what they gave him.

“You think _that’s_ what made Kylo turn?” Skepticism congeals on each syllable.

Hux shrugs. “They told him the enemy was himself.”

“Maybe they were right.”

_She’s_ right, of course. It’s the most articulate explanation for why Ren kept on killing himself--first Ben, then the man he became.

“They told him he had to defeat himself to be happy.”

Rey’s brows tick slightly upward, and she tilts her head to one side. “And Snoke didn’t?”

“I’m not talking about Snoke,” Hux counters, bristling. “His choices were his own.”

“So,” Rey says, pausing heavily, “are you suggesting that he _was_ happy with the First Order?”

“At times.” Hux purses his lips, measures his words, and still manages to falter. “There were...difficult patches, like the ones I’ve shown you, and worse. But at the beginning, he… Things were better. I think he was so glad to be _free_ that he didn’t realize…” Hux bites back the damning end of the sentence, forgetting for a second that he’s talking to a mind-reader.  

“How miserable he should have been?” Rey supplies.

Perhaps his wording wouldn’t have been quite _that_ uncompromising, but she clearly knows what he means. Still, he leaves her in suspense for several moments before agreeing, “I suppose.”

Rey gives him one of those soft, sad, almost pitying smiles she ought to reserve for someone who doesn’t hate her. She extends her hand. “Will you show me?”

Hux purses his lips for a moment, pilfers through half a decade of scars and tears and fights and victories. He lands on Hays Minor’s twin world.

.

.

Hux awakens to the chime of his comm, into total darkness engineered by the hotel room’s light-blocking curtains. He presses his ear reflexively and slurs something that is supposed to be, “This is Hux,” but tends more toward, _This sucks._  
  
“Been up long?” It’s Ren.  
  
“All of three seconds.” Hux props himself up on his elbow. He could dial up the lights, but it’s too much effort. “Why?”  
  
“Do you wanna come down to the water?”  
  
“It’s fucking early,” Hux says, and adds, “I want to sleep,” though he already knows getting back to sleep will be a lost cause. He’s familiar with the situation here on Hays Major, having seen it through the desert wars of its revolution, but today’s talks still require study.

"You didn’t check the time when you picked up?” Ren asks.  
  
“No, I’m just on the earpiece.”  
  
There’s a short burst of static on the other end, like when he laughs through the mask. “You sleep with your earpiece in?”  
  
Hux looks at the ceiling, which is invisible in the blackness. “Of course I sleep with my earpiece in.”  
  
“Of course,” Ren echoes. He’s quiet for a moment, and then: “It’s oh-eight-hundred.” It sounds like he’s masking a smirk.  
  
“Damn it.” Objectively speaking, it isn’t late, but in relative terms, Hux has wasted nearly half his typical morning. Something in his brain is screaming _fucking lazy_ , reminding him that the meetings start at 1030, and his prep list is long.

“You needed it,” Ren says, as if he’s reading Hux’s mind.  
  
Hux doesn’t argue. “How did you sleep?” he asks, in a sort of groggy half-groan.  He instantly regrets the question. If Ren’s the one waking _him_ up, the answer is obviously _not well or deeply._  
  
To Ren’s credit, his tone stays doggedly light. “Would’ve slept better with you.”  
  
Hux sighs. “You were the one who sensed the rooms were bugged.”  
  
“I could’ve disabled the recorders.”  
  
“And roused the Haysians’ suspicions.”  
  
“Fair enough.” The connection crackles briefly. “So are you coming?”  
  
With his free hand, Hux pinches the bridge of his nose, then he swings his legs over the side of the bed. “See you at the lifts.”  
  
Ren wordlessly clicks off the transmission.

* * *

Five minutes and a hasty slipping-on of a training shirt and complimentary sandals later, Hux meets Ren by the lift entrances. Sunlight pours in through an arched window behind him. A glance out shows the local mineral sea, a long way down.

“Morning,” says Ren, belatedly, as Hux presses the _down_ button mounted beside the lifts. Hux doesn’t quite acknowledge him.

Ren’s in training wear, too—loose shorts to his knees and a stupidly tight shirt. More notably, however, he’s unmasked. The silvered doors whir open beside them.  
  
“You’re looking...naked,” Hux says, as they step into the lift, the doors close, and Hux punches the ground-level button.  
  
“You wish.” There’s something positively rakish in Ren’s grin.  
  
“No. I mean.“ Hux coughs, and wills the flush off his face. He places a hand on each of Ren’s cheeks, framing his exposed face. “Someone might see you.” He raises his eyebrows and drops his hands.  
  
“Even if they do, they won’t know who I am.”  
  
Hux raises his eyebrows. “Despite the fact that you’re in my company?”  
  
“You hate me.” Ren shrugs, amusement toying with the corners of his lips. “They’ll think you hired a local... _escort_ or something.”  
  
“Thank you, Ren. Just the scandalous touch my public persona needed.”  
  
“Still more reputable than fraternizing with the Supreme Leader’s apprentice, I’m sure.”  
  
Hux laughs before he can stop himself. “Fraternizing? That’s how we’re defining this today?”  
  
Ren shrugs again, and Hux takes a step closer to him. He’s ridiculous. And he looks like somebody poured him into that shirt. But the lift dings with their arrival on the hotel’s ground floor before Hux can do anything to express his appreciation.

The Haysians are anything but a culture of early risers, so the lobby is fortunately mostly empty. The early rays of both suns filter white and yellow through a skylight onto a mostly beige mosaic inlaid in the floor. Hux and Ren round it, then head out the back of the lobby and into the fierce sunlight.

Hux blinks as they emerge, squinting as he gets his bearings under the cloudless sky. The air is thick with humidity and smells of salt. Ren thinks the beach access is _this way_ , so they thread their way around an immense pool with glittering fountains, a flourishing garden on the edge of the cliff, and onto a series of wooden ramps leading down to the shore.

Once they hit the first ramp--and are out of view of the hotel--Hux’s eyes are for the sea alone--glittering green and flat, mountains on the opposite shore reflected upside down across the surface. It’s a bit of a jolt to feel warm fingers lacing into his own.

He glances at Ren, who averts his eyes.

“What?” he says.

Hux hmms, looks back out over the sea. They’re closer now, can make out the forms of just two other visitors. “Nice fraternizing.”

“Shut up.” Ren just squeezes his hand.

Two ramps later they’ve made it down the cliffside to the pebbled strand of the beach, then throw their towels down on a pair of relatively shaded chairs, closer to the cliff than the water.

Ren looks Hux up and down, gaze lingering on the full-length jodhpurs. “You _are_ gonna go in, right?”

Hux rolls his eyes. “I didn’t come all this way out of bed not to.” He slips the looser pants off, exposing his calves under the same standard-issue shorts Ren’s wearing.

“Good,” Ren says, distantly.  
  
Hux strips off his shirtsleeves and rubs his arms, which are slick with block-spray he applied in his room. He glances at Ren, and he’s staring, lips slightly parted.  
  
“Am I burned already?”  
  
“No, I just—“ Ren averts his eyes, studying the pebbles under their bare feet, then glances back up to hold Hux’s gaze. “I haven’t seen you. Like this. Not in the daylight. You’re—“  
  
“A blinding beacon of white.” Hux reaches to confirm there’s block on the back of his neck.  
  
“I was going to say ‘lovely.’” Ren smirks. “But yours is more accurate.” He slips off his own shirt, the fact of which is many things, but above all, unfair, as it leaves Hux incoherent to form a biting comeback.

Instead, he glances around behind him. There’s a rack of public-use (likely fungally infected) clear plastic shoes against the cliff. Closer to the ramps is a wooden platform with water showers for rinsing off, then next to it a sandy area portioned off. Inside the bounds, two barely-clad Twi’leks are dipping a purple mud out of deep buckets, lathering it onto their bodies in front of a mirror. The inconsistent smears make them look even more like clowns than usual.

Hux read about the practice. The locals dredge up silt from the bottom of the mineral sea, and it’s supposed to do wonders for the skin. That is, if you can get past the whole _rub-dirt-on-yourself-and-look-absurd_ thing.

“Ugh,” he says.

Behind him, Ren scoffs. “My thoughts exactly.”

So that makes one thing they can agree on. Hux turns back to him. “Shall we go in?”

“Ready when you are.”

The pebbles are smooth underfoot as they approach the water, and remain so as they wade in. The highly-concentrated saltwater stings a lingering blister on Hux’s right foot, and as they go deeper, he catches Ren hissing as it seeps into a blaster graze on his arm. After so far of wading, the rocky bottom drops out from under them, replaced by darker green water a solid ten degrees cooler than the upper layers. It leaves them little choice but to float.

Treading water is nearly impossible here: the high salt content makes it feel like treading syrup, and when Hux stops moving for even a moment, the water pressure buoys his feet from under him entirely. It takes a few minutes of plashing in a hopeless mission to stay vertical before he gives in and joins Ren, who’s serenely floating on his back, smirking. His arms are folded behind his head, ankles crossed, feet poking up out of the water. Saltwater beads at his elbows, and across what’s visible of his biceps.

“It isn’t that hard,” Ren says. Hux glances at him to see only his sharp profile, dark hair fanning out around him in the water.

“Apparently,” Hux returns, then looks at the sky himself, all glaring blue.

With his feet out of the water, he can feel the salt-sticky film that’s covered them, begging to be scrubbed off. He ignores it.

It’s quiet out here, on the empty sea, and the suns warm his face. He closes his eyes, and wills himself to think of nothing at all. He’s almost managed it when Ren’s voice startles him back to reality.

“So do you have a favorite?”

Hux blinks against a sudden rush of light, the glare on the water beyond his protruding feet. “What?”

“A favorite world, out of all the ones you’ve been to- that the Order’s captured.”

Well. Ren’s in shockingly rare form if he’s the one asking the _getting-to-know-you_ questions. Hux won’t ruin it by asking why he cares.

“No,” he says instead, truthfully. With each promotion he sees fewer and fewer planetsides, which is no great loss. “The mission’s the same on all of them. They start blurring together. You'll reach this point eventually."  
  
The water laps around Ren's form. His eyes are fixed on the suns, hanging between the beige mountain tops across the sea. "I hope not," he says. "It’ll take a while if I do. Growing up I wondered if I'd ever... see places like this."  
  
Hux weighs his response. Ever since they started fucking, he's been slowly connecting the disjointed, offhand comments Ren makes about his former life. (Snoke's introduction last year was decidedly generic.) Sometimes he wants to discuss his history--complain about it, generally--but others, he completely shuts down, as if any remark he makes is too much said, accidentally unearthing a corpse best left to rot.  
  
Hux lets the water lap for another moment, then tries his luck with Ren's mood. "You didn't even think they'd let you travel after you finished your training? Isn't that the _point_ of that..." He fumbles for the term --'Order' seems an inappropriate descriptor. "...program." That isn't much more precise, but at least it isn't treasonous.  
  
"I had trouble thinking that far ahead." Ren unfolds his arms, skims a long, callused  finger across the surface of the water. "I hardly left the planet while I was training. And he wouldn't even give me a timeframe for when I'd be knighted. I mean, graduate."  
  
Hux has connected enough so far that he doesn't need to ask why not. Something something lacking balance. He isn't sure what it means in spiritual terms, but the material consequences are decidedly less opaque. Broken consoles, slashed-up paneling, nights kicking Hux out after sex, nights without sex, just curling up around Hux and weeping, too inwardly focused to tell Hux is only feigning sleep.  
  
But today is a good day--at least the first half-hour of it that Hux has been awake. He won't start any fires. "And here you are now," he says, "properly knighted, and running around the galaxy scaring people. Just what you joined up for."  
  
Ren gnaws his lip, which looks odd in profile, like part of his mouth has sunken in. It lasts just long enough for Hux to get nervous, think of Ren's lost expression (and his bruises and electrical burns) after sessions with Snoke. But to his credit, he just smirks and crosses his arms behind his head again. "Best decision of my life,” he lies.

Hux probably shouldn't encourage it, but anything besides sarcasm is out of his depth on this subject. “You sound like a recruitment pitch.”

Ren smirks at the clear sky. “Just one of the services I offer.”

“An innovative approach,” Hux shoots back, “bringing my masked and hooded boyfriend to terrify young children into enlisting.”

“I like the sound of that.”

“Of course you do,” Hux replies, feigning exasperation because he doesn’t know whether Ren means the _boyfriend_ part or the _terrifying children_ part.

In response, Ren unfolds his arms long enough to flick water in Hux's direction.

A few drops spatter onto his cheek, and he brushes them off, avoiding his lips. “You're a child."  
  
"Just trying to enjoy this." _While I can_ goes unspoken, and Ren doesn’t stop smiling. "This water is...unbelievable."  
  
"For once you can float without the Force," Hux says. "Remarkable."  
  
"For once _you_ can float."  
  
Hux returns the flicked water, showering Ren's face with it.  
  
"Did you know people still drown in it?" Hux says, after a moment.  
  
"That's possible?" Ren turns his head, wet hair clinging to the side of his face.  
  
" _Yes_."  
  
"Oh." Ren faces skyward again. "You want me to ask how?"  
  
Hux rolls his eyes, but says nothing.  
  
"Enlighten me, please," Ren adds after a moment, with his distinctive brand of pandering sarcasm.  
  
"It's when they try to do a flip or something in the water. Or even just turn on their stomach." Hux unfolds his arms to gesticulate above him, hands curving perpendicular to his body. "The water's so buoyant they don't realize how much upper body strength it takes to get righted again. They flail around upside down until they run out of oxygen and the salt burns their lungs. It doesn’t always even take much water."  
  
"Hm," Ren says, tone somehow both sardonic and dismissive. "Horrifying way to go."  
  
Hux ignores him. "So don’t try any gymnastics."  
  
Ren stretches his arms up, fingers laced together. The dark hairs are plastered to his forearms, and water droplets glitter on the lines of his muscles. "I’m fairly sure I could handle—"  
  
"Don’t." Hux affects an exasperated sigh.  
  
"I won’t."  Ren returns his arms to the water, but tilts his head toward Hux again. After a moment, he says, "Your Officers’ Corps training  covers everything,"  
  
"So does the Hays Major environmental hazards brief," Hux replies, "which you apparently didn’t read before deploying."  
  
Ren snorts. "Was this a test?"  
  
"Yes." Hux rotates in the water himself now, runs a finger across Ren's salt-slick collarbone. "Of whether you're as hopeless without me as I'd thought."  
  
"Nah." Ren rolls his eyes, lets the water buoy him horizontal again. "You just thought it was morbidly interesting."  
  
"It _is_ morbidly interesting," Hux says, threading the words with an unspoken _obviously_ .  
  
"I concur," Ren returns. Hux can hear his smile, though his own eyes remain resolutely squinted toward the open sky. "Do you want to get out and get breakfast?"  
  
"Now?"  
  
"We can stay longer if you want," Ren says. "I just thought the drowning factoid might be some kind of hint."  
  
"Fuck you." Hux splashes him again, resisting a sudden urge to flip onto his stomach and try his luck. "Let's stay a bit."

.

.

When the water seeps into Hux’s skull, it loses its saltiness. It morphs instead into something bland and heavy, a sort of sopping curtain stifling the rest of his thoughts. The chord isn’t musical from beneath it--closer to electric. He feels it like a shock, rather than hears it.

It buzzes through him, and he can hardly breathe, can hardly think, great waves washing over him, pulling him far from shore. He should have opened his eyes by now. He can’t open his mouth--can’t even feel it--but he thinks an SOS toward Ren, then Rey.

At Rey’s name, the darkness evaporates, leaving him with vertigo, seated and bound though he is. The room folds in on itself, the ceiling too low, the floor too high. His vision tunnels for a moment, and he splays his hands on the tabletop, letting the cool plast ground him, seep into his marrow.

“That was--” he says, breathy in his own ears, “--strong.”

Rey acknowledges him with a nod. That undeservedly sad smile lingers at the corners of her mouth. “He didn’t see it,” she says, but sounds puzzled.

Hux humors her, still catching his breath. “See what?”

Rey shakes her head, smile dissolving as her brows knit. “He was as as much a tool of the dark as he thought they wanted him to be of the light. He was still following a path, just… Snoke’s, not his family’s.”

“But he wanted that path,” Hux counters, bristling. How can she not see this yet? “And he eventually moved beyond what Snoke ever intended. His choices were his own.”

Rey’s eyes flash, a dangerous spark deep in the warmth of them. Hux sees the warrior who left Ren bleeding in the snow. “And he thought the light couldn’t possibly be a choice, too?” she retorts, as if the notion offends her.

“That’s beyond anything he said to me.” Hux does his best to spread his hands, but can only raise them to the top of the cuffs, flip them palms-up, the metal cold against his wrists. “All I know is that he was happier serving the Order than he ever was with the Republic and the Jedi.”

“Yet he killed himself because of the Order,” Rey shoots back, even fiercer.

It stings unbearably, hits Hux like a blow to the chest. Because of the Order?

( _Because of you._ )

“Because of the light,” Hux corrects, mustering the disdain he once saved for Ren alone. “He’d have done it a decade sooner if he hadn’t chosen to leave the Jedi.”

“And he would have spared the galaxy a reign of terror.” Rey folds her arms.

Hux scoffs, albeit feebly. “I thought all this was to prevent suicide in Force-sensitives.”

Rey purses her lips and glances down, looking--if Hux didn’t know better--almost chastened. She inhales, appearing to gather herself, and lowers her arms.

“You’re right,” she says. “I am. But I’m mostly trying to help them not to seriously entertain the dark in the first place.”

“So you don’t think he should have stayed with his family and offed himself on their watch?” Hux sneers, ignoring the punched-in feeling somewhere around his diaphragm. “I’m relieved.”

“Of course not,” Rey retorts, straightening herself and glancing toward the door, like she expects to see Organa leering in and denouncing her for treachery. She lowers her voice. “I just want to know what it is they didn’t do.”

That’s easy. “Give him a sense of purpose, uniqueness, direction.” Hux pauses, weighing his next word. It’s almost hyperbole, but he says it anyway, as there’s no apter term. “Contentment.”

Rey raises her eyebrows. “And the Order did all that,” she says, flatly. “Despite how it turned out.”

“At least better than anything else might have,” Hux insists.

“There on Hays Major,” Rey says, after a moment. “That wasn’t the Order making him happy, Armitage.”

“I didn’t say ‘happy,’” Hux shoots back, more defensive than is strictly necessary, due to the racing of his pulse. “I said content.”

“You did say happy, a few minutes ago. But content isn’t all that different.” Rey inhales. “Regardless, he seemed happy to be with you. I’m not sure about the rest of it.”

_Because of you._ Hux excises the thought with an almost surgical precision. He did nothing but encourage Ren in the choices he’d already made. (And, back then, give him something to look forward to after Snoke’s training.)

“He wanted the Order,” Hux insists. “I was an unexpected perk.”

“I’m not saying you weren’t,” Rey agrees. Her tone is placating, but she seems to mean it. “And I’ve never gotten the impression you were the only reason he stayed.”

“You truly think he would have ever left?” Has she seen none of what Hux has shown her, ignored every damn word he’s said? “He couldn’t have, not then under Snoke, and especially not later, when the Order was his own.”

“That was pure hubris,” Rey replies with an air of disgust. She runs an exasperated hand through her hair, smoothing loose strands. “All his doubts, but he still wouldn’t give up.”

Hux wouldn’t have allowed that, but Rey has already seen as much, with his angry bout of planning after the Chandrila spat.

Perhaps he should have considered it, though--hindsight colors surrender somewhat rosier. At least Ren would be alive, though he’d likely be as miserable as Hux is, or worse off, enduring entreaties from Rey and his mother. Or he’d be just plain out of his mind. (The dark would never let him go so easily.

For all Hux spurned his doubts, it isn’t fair to Ren to act as though he never had them, or didn’t see where they’d lead. It isn’t fair to their relationship to act as though he’d never express them to Hux. To do so would flatten Ren to a pawn, something almost worse than Organa’s prodigal or Mitaka’s predator. (Snoke’s he might have been, for a while, but never Hux’s.)

So far Hux has shown Rey the symptoms of Ren’s conflict, but only part of how he explained the cause. She needs to see the root, and she needs to see the choice, time and again. Balance, after all.

“May I?” he says, and stretches his right wrist further through the cuff, extending his hand toward her. She nods slowly, and takes it.

.

.

It’s 0100 when Hux returns to the suite once considered Ren’s private quarters, but an unnatural twilight spreads between the doors as they whir open. The lights are dimmed to little more than a faint grey glow. Something cold unfurls in the pit of Hux’s stomach. Low lighting and limited stimuli were once Ren’s self-prescribed remedies after a session with Snoke--he isn’t supposed to need them now.

A glance across the room as he enters shows Ren as a great dark mass on the bed, curled into a loose comma with his back--uncharacteristically--to the door.

Hux purses his lips and uselessly offers, “Hey.”

“Hey.” Ren says it half into the pillow, and doesn’t move.

So it’s one of _these_ days. Fuck.

And Ren’s got a combat op tomorrow. Of course. The Force smiles upon its favored son once again.

Hux peels off his gloves, then pockets them. Moving to shrug off his coat, he says the wrong damn thing. “So are you trying to set the mood with the lights like this, or…?”

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t ask that.” Hux allows his voice a hint of smugness as he hangs up the coat and crosses the floor to the bed. He perches on the edge of the mattress, at the opposite corner from Ren, to unlace his boots and work them off.

Ren doesn’t answer him, just shifts slightly, sheets around him rustling as the bed dips with Hux’s weight, and again as it springs back when he rises to line up his boots against the wall. Even in the dimness, he can make out a faint black scuff on the silvered paneling in front of them. He presses the toe of his left boot to the wall to cover it up, and decides to register the fact that his sarcasm is bouncing off Ren like so many missiles off an ion shield, and that Ren is, therefore, not fine.

Hux inhales long and slow before fixing a careful, deliberate gaze on his belt as he unbuckles it. He ignores the icy tendrils of the thing in his gut, and affects longsuffering. “What is it, Ren?” It comes out even more clipped than he meant it, which is probably the bone-tiredness talking.

Four hours of briefings on Chandrila’s ongoing attempt to “peacefully withdraw” from the Order’s “sphere of influence” have taken their toll, on top of visiting the Order outposts on five contentious planets and three rebellious systems in two days. Ren’s been more or less useful. He took out a whole battalion of rice farmers-turned-militiamen on Ghoba, at any rate.

“I’m fine,” he repeats.

Hux loops his belt into itself twice, then slips it into the top drawer of the vanity beside him. “The more times you volunteer that, the less likely I am to believe it.” He shucks his outer tunic in a motion that loosens a lock of hair, and brushes it out of his face, annoyed. “You can tell me.” It comes out nearly sing-song, accidentally less than heartfelt.

“You know.” Ren’s right arm is bent at his side, hand resting on the mattress in front of him. His head rests in the crook of his left, and his hand plays distractedly with his hair, scratching at the nape of his neck.

Hux sighs. “The Light.”

“It’s the reason for all of this,” Ren says, not bothering to clarify with _‘our slow defeat._ ’ “And it's...bad...today."

The Force alone knows what he’s trying to ask for. If he’s asking for anything. It’s taking every ounce of Hux’s compulsiveness to get him out of his dirty uniform before falling into bed. There’s not enough left to divine Ren’s remedy du jour. Maybe it’s a _sarcastic remarks_ kind of night. That’s Hux’s fallback cure at any rate.

"Must be awful,” he says, primly, “being tempted to virtue." He strips his next layer, and on a whim gives it a noisy shake in front of him, ostensibly to minimize wrinkles before folding it. It catches Ren’s attention, but Hux, down to shirtsleeves, jodhpurs, socks, and briefs, makes a point not to turn when he hears the mattress creak as Ren rotates.  
  
"You have no idea." Sure enough, Ren’s voice is far less muffled. He’s probably resumed the same position on his right side, but at least this way he’s facing Hux.

Hux folds the shirt with a languid ease that doesn’t match the regulation creases of it, then bends excessively at the waist to store it beside the belt.  
  
With his back (and ass) still to Ren, he makes a show of rummaging for something in the drawer and drawls, "Force urging you to run home to your mother?" It’s a low blow, but this thing they have is built on them.  
  
"Shut up," Ren says.  
  
"Close down the labor camps?"

"Fuck off."

Hux’s tone is crisp, but he takes his time with the undershirt, coming damn near close to flexing. Not that there’s much there to show, but Ren usually seems to like what is. _What is_ being: the knife-points of his elbows, the negligible knots of his biceps, the sparsely-scattered freckles and moles.  
  
"Steer the fleet into a black hole?" Hux tosses the undershirt into the hamper in the corner, and diligently goes to work on the buttons of his jodhpurs, back still to Ren.  
  
"I hate you."  
  
“I’m sure.” A few fluid motions, and the jodhpurs are sailing into the hamper behind the undershirt.

Hux risks a glance at Ren as he pulls on his robe and heads for the fresher. Surprisingly, he isn’t touching himself, just looking at Hux with warm, still-wet eyes. That gaze alone could swallow Hux whole.

He manages not to think about it, or much of anything, nearly falling asleep against the counter for his ten minutes in the fresher. Teeth, skin, and hair more or less settled, he heads back out and pulls on a pair of shorts before shedding the robe and slipping under the sheets beside Ren.

Ren’s rolled onto his back, and is staring unblinkingly at the ceiling, arms folded behind his head.

“Lights, zero percent,” Hux says. They fade in seconds, leaving a darkness broken only by the bluish glow of the chronos.

Ren lies beside Hux in silence for several minutes. The soft hitch of his breathing seems to dominate the room, and Hux finds his own unconsciously attuned to it. As soon as he realizes this, the drowsiness that had had him ready to drop on his feet just minutes ago all but dissipates. Ren’s right here beside him, just as wide-eyed.

“I hate this,” Ren says, once the silence has grown empty and overbearing. “It shouldn’t still feel like this.”

“You could always resurrect the Galactic Concordance and sign off.”

“As of eight months ago wasn’t the Concordance somewhat--” He pauses, lifts a fist, and extends the five fingers slow and stiff, in what must be a pantomime of Starkiller. “--retired?”

“I’m sure there’s a copy on the Holonet somewhere, lying in wait for relevance. If you’re interested.”

“I’ve read it,” Ren says. “I’m not interested.”

Hux mimics Ren’s gesture, uncurling his hand into a taut stretch of the joints in mid-air. His fingers look dark in the cyan light. “You’re welcome, then.”

“You know it isn’t that easy.” Ren shifts and tugs at the covers.

Hux lowers his hand. “It should be.”

Ren says nothing, and the silence falls hollow over them again. It’s impossible to sleep when he’s like this, Force-wired and fragile. And Hux has almost, almost got him talking.  
  
"So?" Hux tries again, turning his head to face Ren, who’s still staring resolutely at the ceiling.  
  
"So what?" he says.  
  
"So are you going to correct me and pretentiously explain what it's actually like?"  
  
"You know." Ren sounds exhausted, though he shouldn’t be after a day spent mostly in his chambers. It’s hard to remember, sometimes, that he fights battles in here alone.  
  
Hux presses. "I'm asking."  
  
Ren’s quiet for a moment, long enough to wonder if he’s fallen asleep, but then he inhales, deep and deliberate, like one of his masters probably taught him. "It's not…” he starts, “political, like you always think. It isn't like I'm suddenly overcome by the value of freedom, or convinced about planets' rights or some shit. It's...bigger.” 

“Bigger how?”  
  
“It's about balance. I go too far toward the dark, the light tugs me back. But it's the light itself, not whatever dogmas they're attaching to it. The Force wants me to be--" Ren raises a hand perpendicular to his body. "--the fulcrum." 

It should sound maddeningly narcissistic - he _is_ maddeningly narcissistic - but Hux has never seen any evidence to the contrary. Ren is _important_ , in a way Hux has had to fight his whole life to be. Too bad it’s tearing Ren to pieces.

"But the dark is what's gotten you this far,” Hux says.  
  
"Right."  
  
"You wouldn't be in a position to be the fulcrum without it."  
  
“Right.”

“Therefore, shouldn’t that…” Hux grasps for the rest of the syllogism. “...count for something?”

Ren finally turns toward Hux, throwing his profile out of place and casting the scarred side of his face in shadow. He props his head up on his right hand. “You know the universe is straining for balance,” he says, but can’t maintain eye contact any longer than that. “With everything I've--that _we've_ done to get here, we've. Tipped it to one side, now it's pulling the other way.” He swallows, then traces incoherent lines in the sheet between them with his left hand. “And it’s pulling me the other way.”

It’s the most pathetic thing Hux has ever seen. He covers most of Ren’s left hand with his right, stilling it. The skin is warm, and Hux can feel the bulges of his veins, the contours of his bones.

“It'll be balanced after we win,” he offers. “Just be patient. You've fought it this long. You can hold out a little longer.”  
  
Ren looks up at him. “We aren't gonna win.”

It hits Hux like a blow, and he startles, recoiling. Ren’s been in pits before—it took weeks to get him going even after Snoke’s death and his own ascent to the throne, an objective good—but he’s never said anything like this, so blatantly despairing (even if they’ve both thought it, since things started slipping). Aloud, though, it feels like a form of treachery, kindles Hux to rage.

Ren’s pained expression tempers an outburst of emotion. He sounded so miserable that Hux doesn’t hit him, just withdraws his hand.  
  
“What the _fuck_ , Ren.”

“You haven’t been listening to me.” There’s heat in his tone, a flame curling the edges of it. “I just fucking explained it.”

“You’re full of shit.”

Ren purses his lips, then flips onto his back, studying the ceiling panels again. He inhales deeply before addressing Hux, tone slow and measured, barely contained.

“It's all stacking up to swing back the other way. All the new support for the Resistance. The little rebellions. The skirmishes we keep losing.” He pauses, and the lovely muscles of his throat work as he swallows. He’s delicious in profile, and at the moment Hux hates everything  about him. “We had our chance, and it got too dark. There's nothing we can do about it.”  
  
Hux thins his lips, then scoffs, echoing, “‘Nothing we can do.'”  
  
Ren shakes his head.  
  
“All your power,” Hux says, slowly, disbelieving,  “and there's _nothing we can do_ .”  
  
“Either we keep on and we lose, or we quit and we lose before things get worse.”  
  
“Surrender?” Hux rephrases, and his voice pitches shamefully upward. Before he can stop himself, he reaches over and shakes Ren’s shoulder, as violently as possible when he’s on his back. “Is that what it's trying to tell you? Is that what you're saying?” 

“I don't know what I'm saying.” Ren tilts his head toward Hux again, eyeing his hand. Hux withdraws it a second time.  
  
“Clearly,” he says.  
  
Ren doesn’t reply, just studies Hux’s face. He has an expression like he'd like to be fucked insensible (heavy-lidded, taut-lipped), but Hux has no intention of rewarding this kind of talk. He rolls over and faces the wall, staring resolutely at the blue-glowing chrono.  
  
If it weren't coming from the Supreme Leader, this would be treason. If Hux dug hard enough into Order policy, he could probably find a clause justifying the elimination of a senior official whose interests no longer match those of the organization.  
  
But the mattress creaks, and Ren is rolling over beside him, curling around him and pulling him to his chest. He slips his leg between Hux's--warm, heavy, tight with muscle. Hux can't quite manage to kick him. Without a word, he nuzzles Hux's neck, then brushes his lips in a tingling line across Hux's bare shoulder.  
  
"Ren," Hux says, relaxing into the curve of him, "you can't quit on me."  
  
"I won't."  
  
"You can't give up."  
  
"I know." Ren’s voice cracks, just a little, and something inside Hux struggles to remain intact. He places his hand over Ren’s on his own chest, twines his fingers through Ren’s long, callused ones. 

“You just want to,” he says, around the tightness in his throat, “don’t you?”

It takes Ren too long to answer. “Sometimes,” he says, and Hux isn’t sure whether he’d rather turn around to punch Ren or to sob into him. He opts for something less than both, but his exasperated sigh is only partially artificial.

“Damn good thing you’re beautiful,” he says.  
  
“Damn good thing you’re easy.” With that, Ren lifts both their hands to presses a kiss to Hux’s knuckles, then lets go to trail his fingers down Hux’s chest and over his waistband, to trace the length of him from outside his shorts. It shouldn’t be arousing.

“I’m not easy.”

Ren squeezes, gentle but assertive. “Definitely not.”  
  
“We have work tomorrow.” This second sigh is entirely authentic.

“And?”  
  
“And I need to be coherent and functional at oh-five-hundred.”

In response, Ren strokes his thumb down the thin fabric of the regulation shorts. Hux shivers.

“Stop,” he says, halfheartedly.

Hux has talks with Chandrilan leadership on their idiotic independence proposal (humoring them will be more affordable than a bombardment), while Ren has an insurgency to finish off on one of the moons.

Hux attempted to dissuade him—that kind of tactical mission is inappropriate for an official of Ren’s station—but Ren insisted: _“It’ll be more efficient if I’m there. Fewer casualties. It won’t drag on.”_ He was right, of course, even if the rationale also conveniently availed to get him out of visiting the planet itself, and whatever ghosts lie there.

“It won’t take long,” Ren says. Hux can hear his smirk as he adds, “Obviously.”

“But afterward I’ll have to kiss you. And then clean up, and--”

“I’ll clean up.”

It’s tempting. Ren will be fine running—for the eighteen hours before he crashes, at any rate—on dopamine, caf, and bloodlust. Hux on the other hand, needs a solid four hours if he wants to see more of the Chandrilans’ proposal than of the backs of his eyelids.

“You won’t clean up,” Hux says.

“I will.”  
  
Ren’s already rubbing Hux through the fabric, and he’s undeniably hard. Even left-handed, Ren’s too damn good at this.

“If I let you--” Hux is already a bit breathless, but he forces it out. “--will you promise not to quit--all of this--on me?”

Ren kisses his neck, sucking just hard enough that Hux knows it’ll bruise. “I promise,” he breathes onto Hux’s skin. The fresh mark stings, but it’s forgotten as Ren’s hand strays to Hux’s waistband.

.

.  
  
Rey stops the memory before Ren can take him out (before he’s satisfied), and he’s jolted back to Private Conference Two, hot all over, head buzzing.

Rey’s peevish look quickly morphs to something brief and sympathetic, but that too passes. Her brows draw down, and there’s something like a storm in her gaze.  
  
"Why did you tell him to do that?” she says, coldly. “He might still be alive if you'd let him surrender like he wanted."  
  
"He didn't want to surrender.” The response is automatic, but Hux is compelled to justify it: “That’s why he’s dead.”

Rey pops her lips and flexes her laced fingers. “Certainly sounds like he wanted to.”

“You knew him,” Hux says, amending it with, “to some extent. Surely you could tell he never would have.”

“He might have.” Rey’s faintly nodding, a strange, controlled tremor of the chin. “But you wouldn’t let him so much as entertain the idea.”

“Because I believed in him!” It’s out, impassioned, before Hux can dilute it with logic or irony or finely-crafted insults. He hopes it’s true.

“So did I,” says Rey.

“Preying on his doubts, manipulating his weaknesses--that’s what you call believing in him?”

Rey smiles bleakly, for a moment. “I think you and I define weakness very differently, Armitage.” She sniffs, and it’s now that Hux registers she’s on the verge of tears, eyes shimmering, throat working. “Anyway,” she goes on, “it turned out the person I believed in died a long time ago.”

“By the same hand,” Hux says, without pity. _He didn’t want what you offered him_ , he means. _He never did._

“Offed himself twice,” Rey manages, bitter and sardonic. “Remarkable.”

“He was.”

* * *

As the dinner cart trundles down the hall that evening, Hux leaves his tray on the ledge in the door they slide it onto. The briny smell of fish wafts toward him from under the insulated lid, and he stares at the ceiling dreading it, trying to motivate himself to leave the cot.

He’s been laying like this for hours, arms folded behind his head, idly counting the rills in the ceiling. Rey still hasn’t told him how much longer she’ll need him, and it’s only getting worse. It isn’t even the sensations--he’s getting used to the tricks of the Force, the way it conjures Ren’s presence, sets Hux’s head singing with him. It’s the accusations.

He’s sure Rey doesn't intend to blame him. After all, he was just one of many factors contributing to Ren’s demise; he knows that cognitively, even accepts it. But it doesn’t change the fact that he _was_ one.

Ren couldn’t have been happier, under his circumstances--his years as Ben, the miserable prince, had proven that. Hux had done the best he could, but he has no better evidence to offer Rey. His best was rhydonium fuel in a hypermatter tank: incompatible, useless, and highly corrosive.

After a few minutes, he manages to sit up. The fish is probably cold by now.

Hux rubs his face, and his fingers come back wet. It’s then that he notices the stiffness below the teartracks, the sticky, puffy feeling around his eyes. He swings his legs over the side of the cot, and puts his elbows on his knees, holding his head for a moment.

He runs his hands through his overgrown hair. He needs Rey’s knife.


	6. Night Must Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone with MCD triggers who's made it this far, I'd recommend checking out the endnote content warnings. Stay safe, friends <3

The next day, Rey sits across from Hux in Private Conference Two, the rickety, chattering cooling unit as insufferable as usual. Her eyes are fixed on his face, but she doesn’t seem to be taking him in, none of the usual darting study. If she suspects the dismal juncture of exhaustion, despair, and frustration he’s reached, she gives no sign.

“What I showed you yesterday--” Hux explains, and laces his fingers together as best he can despite the binders. They’re far enough apart that his palms can’t touch. “--was about three standard months before-- before it all fell apart--”

“Yes, the Chandrila talks,” Rey supplies.

“The…” Hux fumbles for a harsher term but fails. “...revolutions started shortly thereafter, and--” Hux falters again, heat prickling his face. Rey’s nodding along, not hurrying him, but clearly not benefiting from this whatsoever. Naturally not.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” Hux regards his folded fingers, offers them a pathetic little half-laugh. “You orchestrated it.”

For some reason, Rey smiles back. “Not just me.” She pauses, tilts her head. “And you know I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t interested in hearing your take on things that I already know happened.”

“Shall I continue in chronological order, then?”

“Please.”

Rey’s hand settles on Hux’s, and he closes his eyes, finding his balance in the dark there. The plucked chord vibrates distantly, and who cares whether Rey can hear it. Hux usually doesn’t, not before he’s even started remembering. No matter--he still has a task at hand.

He lets it thread its way through the memory, pulsing as their chambers on the _Finalizer_ come into view, a grey circle, rapidly expanding in the darkness. Soon, it dominates his view.

.

 

.

 

As Hux steps out of the fresher, the indistinct hum of a Holo transmission solidifies into a reporter’s crisp tones, and fucking hell. Some cowardly part of him wants to turn around, strip out of his robe, and put the sonic back on full blast.

In quite possibly the safest place in the galaxy (for all that’s a sad statement), it aches to hear:

“ _The First Order's scorched-terrain tactics have seemingly backfired here on recently-liberated Hays Major. The destruction of homes, refineries, and government centers created a stream of refugees, which banded together into a viable insurgency--an insurgency which mere hours ago toppled the First Order's planetside dictatorship. Here to comment is rebellion leader Pert Korlon...”  
_ _  
_ "What the _hell_ are you watching?"

Ren’s sprawled across the bed, attention rapt on the high-def projection.

  
"The news." _Live on the HoloNet: your personal coup de grace._  
  
Hux swallows, and fixates on the irrelevant. "We invest how many credits per annum in a highly advanced intelligence enterprise, and you're getting your updates from the fucking _Beacon_?"

The _Galaxy Beacon_ ’s headquarters burned with the Hosnian System. The reporting angle scraped together by their scattered correspondents since then has been better classified as fiction than journalistic spin. (The Order hadn’t destroyed a single damn refinery on Hays Major--in fact, a point had been made to spare them.)

  
"It can't hurt to get the other side," Ren says. “Might as well know the worst.”  
  
Hux scoffs, and says nothing.  
  
Ren shifts his gaze from pre-recorded footage of Hays Major’s strip-mined deserts. "You know all your inside sources are either sycophants or double agents, anyway."  
  
“Is that claim backed by statistics or by the Force?” Hux moves out of the fresher doorway, briefly shadowing the projector as he moves to stand by his side of the bed.

“Bit of both.” Ren turns back to the projection.  
  
"And it therefore makes Republic propaganda so much more reliable?" Hux crosses his arms.  
  
Ren gives him a pathetic sort of laugh, more a huff than the rare but lovely rumble. "I'm reading the intel, too,” he says. “I figure the truth lies somewhere in between."  
  
"I figure." Hux turns back to the projection.  
  
The people of Hays Major are tearing Order recruitment posters off windows, burning crimson Order banners in crowded streets. Black smoke curls from the recommissioned office complex that had been serving as Hux's now-dead governor's headquarters. The bombed-out shells of homes and businesses loom behind the jubilant mob, corroded spikes and burned-black I-beams poking out of the rubble. Festival music blares.  
  
They’d known the Order’s hold on Hays Major was slipping, but the revolt wasn’t expected to crystallize for a few standard months. They’d assumed there was time to right it.

They’d _assumed_.

The camera pans back to a tentacled xeno holding a microphone. The tentacles are covered in warts, and a mucous membrane spreads between them like webbing.  
  
Hux grimaces. "What is that thing?"  
  
"The reporter...?" Ren knows damn good and well he means its species.  
  
"Brilliant face for their public diplomacy efforts."  
  
“ _The victorious insurgents have gained control of the capital, and plan to hold elections in the coming weeks.”  
_  
"Likely story."  
  
“ _Their leadership wants all refugee viewers to know that there_ is _hope for them, and that their friends in the Otomok system will back them every step of the way in their own fight for freedom. Back over to Naji in the studio.”_

“ _Thanks, Cal.”_ A human in what ought to be a cocktail dress now dominates the screen. They nearly blend into the stock holomap of the Chommell sector behind them.  “ _Up next: will the Central Resistance ever emerge from the shadows? We ask former Republic policy analyst Blane Freer, right after this short--”  
_  
A plastic object hits Hux's shoulder, pulling his attention from the screen as he fumbles to catch it. It's the lube bottle. Of course.  
  
"No." He throws it back, aiming for Ren's head.  
  
Ren's hand shoots up, and he catches it mid-air. He shrugs. "Worth a shot." He studies Hux for a moment. "You're stressed."  
  
“We should both be back on the bridge,” he says. “We need to get analysts on top of this.” He’ll come no closer to admitting this is an intelligence failure of massive proportions.  
  
“And what would that do?” Ren looks up at him lazily.  
  
He’s insufferable, just fucking _lying there_ while everything they’ve built burns down around them. Hux, suffocating on the rising smoke, has no idea how he can stand it. (It isn’t like him to be able to stand it.)

“Get us some actual, solid information on how this happened,” Hux replies, acidly, and half-pivots toward the closet. He needs to get dressed, he needs to fix his hair, he needs to get back out there and have the entire intel analysis cadre demoted on the spot for this oversight, he needs--  
  
“And why would that help, right now?” Ren’s voice is calm and even, yet still somehow obnoxious.  
  
“Obviously,” Hux replies, agitated and pressed for time, “it will allow us to prevent it from happening in the future.”  
  
Ren snorts. “I said _right now_.”

Hux could scream. He could just. fucking. _scream._ He balls his fists at his sides, nails digging into the palms. Somewhere in the back of his mind, it stings.  
  
“What are we supposed to do, then?” he says, and hates the shrillness of his voice even as he can’t stop it. “Just sit back and—“  
  
“Come here.” Ren nods toward Hux’s side of the bed. Completely ignores every goddamn word he just sand.

“ _What?_ ”  
  
“There’s nothing you can do about it,” Ren says, and if that isn’t fucking familiar. “Come here.”  
  
Hux stays put. “I’m not saying I’m going to _fix_ it. I just…” He inhales, drains the sneer from his voice as best he can. “...ought to react.”  
  
“You always think you have to do something.”  
  
“As if you don’t,” Hux scoffs. “I’m tempted to grab your lightsaber and carve up the wall myself, if you won’t. I can’t really think of a more fitting occasion.”  
  
“Feel free.” Ren shrugs, and his voice is dead and hollow, apathetic and un-Renlike. Impossibly so.  
  
Hux clenches his fists at his sides. “Why are you acting like this doesn’t fucking matter?”  
  
“It matters.”  
  
“Then go scream and break things!” Hux closes his eyes, cools his tone slightly. He can’t be the one blowing up at Ren, not when Renis refusing to reciprocate. “Or was your meditation just that effective today?”  
  
“Hux—”

“Or is it your Light that’s fucking with your priorities?”  
  
Ren doesn’t answer the question, just cocks an eyebrow. “Never thought I’d hear you wanting me to break things.”  
  
“I don’t want you to...” Hux trails off. Surely _go on a destructive rampage_ is understood. He collects himself. “You should just be feeling something, damn it.”  
  
This is more than just infuriating - it’s eerie and unnatural. Ren this serene, while Hux feels ready to shatter.

“I _am_ feeling,” Ren says. “I’m just tired.” His gaze holds a distinctive pleading expression--tearless, but no less pitiful. It deflates Hux, just a bit. Ren shouldn’t be like this, passive and despairing. He said he wouldn’t give up, he _said_ \--

Hux nods mutely, feeling his throat tighten with stupid, angry tears.

Ren looks him up and down, fixes his eyes on Hux’s rapidly blinking ones, the awkward spasms of his swallowing throat. “You can’t go out there like this.”

_He’s right, you’re an_ emotional _mess, this is pathetic--_

“Come here.” Ren moves his hand in a feeble sort of beckon, without taking his eyes off Hux. “It’s okay.”

Hux clenches his eyes shut and raises a hand to run it compulsively through his hair.

The commercial break is over: _“Welcome back to the_ Beacon’ _s live coverage of the latest in a string of revolutions. Hays Major joins--”_

“Hux. Please.”

_Fuck it._ Hux opens his eyes and wordlessly sinks onto the bed, inching across the mattress to curl into Ren’s side. His cheek is pressed against Ren’s chest, and Ren wraps an arm around his shoulders, a warm, stabilizing weight.

“I’ll turn it off,” Ren says, after a moment.

“Don’t.” Hux breathes in the scent of standard detergent clinging to Ren’s undershirt, the vaguely herbal musk of his freshly applied deodorant.

“You don’t want to hear any more of it.”

“I should hear it anyway.”

“Not tonight.”

Ren’s hand moves from Hux’s shoulder to comb through his hair. Hux tries not to be bothered that it should be the other way around: himself soothing Ren while something falls to pieces. Force knows how many times it’s been that way before.

It’s- disarmingly relaxing, the pressure of Ren’s fingers against his scalp, the rhythm of his strokes. Hux manages not to close his eyes, staring as Ren’s free hand flicks up toward the holo console behind them. In his periphery, the wall opposite goes blank.

They sit in silence for a few minutes, Ren’s hand in constant motion, until the quiver of Hux’s chin subsides.

“Why aren’t you angry?” Hux murmurs. “I don’t understand. You should be insane with it.”

“Would you prefer it to this?” Ren’s fingers keep moving, unbearably gentle.

Hux shakes his head, a slight motion caught between Ren’s pectoral and the palm of his hand. “I’m tired, too.”

“Then get some sleep.”

“That isn’t what I mean.”

What he means is far less curable, more illness than sensation: the soft grey fog that’s gnawed at the edges of his brain since before he can remember, the gravitational pull that wants every morning to anchor him in bed. That demands one good reason that his life is worth getting up for. It’s what Ren means, too.

“I know,” Ren says, then stills his fingers and crooks his neck to press a kiss to Hux’s temple. His lips linger, brushing the skin like he’s unwilling to pull back. They’re chapped and tickle faintly. “But you still have to sleep.”

“I suppose,” Hux murmurs. His eyes have fallen shut, and exhaustion tugs at him like a great dark wave. He’s succumbing to the tide as Ren eases both of them down.

Ren’s order to the lights registers as if from far-off, a staticky transmission barely clinging to intelligibility.

 

* * *

 

Hux awakens to motion in the bed--the dip and rise of the mattress and the ephemeral burst of cold that accompanies a coverlet being lifted, then replaced.

He blinks, adjusting to the darkness for several moments, and by the time he’s managed to focus his vision, the motion he registers is Ren, rounding the foot of the bed. He’s heading for the door. Behind his silhouette, the chrono reads 0332, and the dim blue light catches on the hilt of the lightsaber in his hand.

“Ren?” Hux slurs.

Ren freezes, but is a moment too slow in turning around. Still, he changes his trajectory to loop around the side of the bed.  “Didn’t mean to wake you,” he says, pausing in front of Hux with his skin cast blue.

Hux ignores his excuse for an apology, shifts upward enough to prop his elbow on the pillow and his head on his hand. “What are you doing?”

“Going to meditate.” Ren’s answer is slow, too, tone empty and distracted.

“With your lightsaber?”

Ren’s eyes dart to the floor, then back up to Hux. His teeth work over his lower lip in that childish tell of his. “I’m...gonna train, too.”

“At this hour?” Hux is aware of how groggy he sounds, the nagging lilt of his voice.

Ren’s fingers tighten around the hilt. “Can’t fucking sleep.”

Shit. It’s never good when Ren’s the insomniac.

“Try?”

“I did.”

Hux sighs, and his voice grows crisper with the lines of the shadows in the room, the gradual sense-sharpening of full alertness. “Try some more.”

It strikes him that Ren shouldn’t be alone when he’s like this--when the Force is doing him like this. It’s one thing when he’s angry--after all it isn’t safe for bystanders--but what’s more, he’s predictable then. He’ll destroy a number of innocent objects until he fizzles out, and when he returns to their quarters he’ll be muted, sometimes even apologetic.

This current mood, though, is just the opposite. It’s like the horrible shell-Ren that would sometimes exist for days after a session with Snoke, a thing that felt subhuman. At times it made Hux question whether there was anything left under the cowl and mask, or if Snoke had disposed of the man and left a mechanism, had animated the drapery and programmed the vocoder with monosyllabic responses. When the mask came off, the flesh and blood beneath would still look less than alive.

“I have to go think,” Ren says.

“About what?”

“All of this.”

Hux inhales. “Specifically,” he says, without inflection.

Ren thins his lips and looks up from Hux, fixing his gaze on the blue digits of the chrono on the opposite wall. “If there’s another way out of it.”

Hux’s pulse quickens, a response instinct that shouldn’t be set off now. It shouldn’t be Ren’s apathy that affects him this way, that frightens him for something he’s never known how to fear. “ _Another_?” he echoes.

“I mean, there is one way, there always is, it’s just--” Ren ends abruptly, and the unspoken thing is the leering apparition that comes with having offed one version of yourself already.

Blood hammers in Hux’s temples. On impulse, he reaches for Ren’s hand, a stupid, needy gesture that he can’t quite regret. He entwines their fingers, and Ren squeezes. It’s a good sign, even if it’s automatic.

“Think in here,” Hux says.

“I need to be alone.”

“You really don’t.” Hux slips his fingers out of Ren’s to shift upright, but takes his hand again once he’s properly sitting. They’re vac-cold, and he’s just now noticing.

Ren looks at their tangled fingers instead of Hux’s face. “You know I sometimes have to be.”

“Then the saber stays.”

“Why?”

Hux looks down at their hands too, drags his thumb over Ren’s knuckles. “I might need it,” he says, too airily.

“And I might not?” In Hux’s periphery, Ren’s fingers work the hilt, blurs on the glinting metal.

“Not to think,” Hux says, and looks back up. He extends his free hand for the saber. Ren sighs, but puts it in his open palm.

The durasteel is cold like Ren’s skin, and Hux works his hand down well past the activator switch. Delicate handling is the closest the thing has to a safety.

“Thank you,” Hux says.

Ren doesn’t reply, just squeezes his hand again, then bends to pull it to his lips. The kiss lingers on his knuckles, and Hux leans toward him, eyelids sinking shut all but involuntarily. Ren’s mouth is warmer than the rest of him.

Hux’s eyes open with the motion of Ren setting his hand slowly back down on the mattress, then letting go.

“Be careful,” Hux says, as he turns.

“Yeah.”

Hux stares after him for a while. There’s nothing to worry about. Ren turned over the lightsaber with no complaints, and he seemed as interested as ever in Hux’s hands.

But maybe he _should have_ complained. Maybe he’s thinking of doing something else entirely.

_Maybe you should go after him, maybe you shouldn’t be so fucking lazy, so fucking gullible, maybe--_

Hux closes his eyes again, bites his lip, and forces his mind blank. He settles back onto the mattress and slides the lightsaber under his pillow to render it theoretically inaccessible. It isn’t directly under his skull, but he can hardly move his head without meeting the hard edge of it. He readjusts and rotates it several times before drifting slowly back to sleep.

.

 

.

He wakes up in front of Rey, who lifts her hand from his arm as if recoiling from a hot engine.

“So you did know?” she says, brows knit. Her inquisitive lilt sounds like an afterthought.

Hux’s shields fly up. “I didn’t. I had no idea what he was going to do.”

“You suspected,” Rey retorts. “You clearly knew something was off. You were scared. I could feel it, in the Dark.”

Of course he’d been scared. Everything he’d worked for was crumbling around him, and Ren was acting bizarrely, and had never been a stable, optimistic person to begin with. It had been no leap of logic for Hux’s exhausted brain to consider alternative definitions of _giving up_. But nothing came of it, and it passed.

“I didn’t know what I was suspecting,” Hux says, and isn’t quite lying. It was more gut instinct than anything terribly articulable.  “And then I was wrong.”

Rey studies him, and he swallows. He feels like an insect under a microscope, her steady gaze poring over the intricacies of his protective shell. She sees him perhaps more clearly than he sees himself, which is a terrifying and repulsive thought. Still, he acquiesces to whatever goad she’s putting on his mind.

“On that particular night,” he clarifies, “I was wrong.”

Rey pops her lips, eyes narrowed. “And you never suspected anything again? He never acted like that again?”

He did, yes, but it stopped being terribly noteworthy - a new setting on the volatile roulette-dial of his moods.

“No,” Hux lies, but balances it with, “I wish I had.”

Rey ponders this for a moment, and either the cooling unit hums, or it’s Hux’s head. Finally, she extends a hand with a decisive, sure motion.

“Is there anything,” she says, holding out her hand, no question in her voice now.

There’s more where Ren’s moodiness came from, two standard months more from the day Hays Major fell. But there’s also ending this to consider.

Wordlessly, he slides his wrist far enough through the cuff for her fingers to land on his pulsepoint. The metal is cold against his skin. Grounding.

He closes his eyes, and shows her what she’s been looking for all along.

.

 

.

“Six BBY.” Ren hums appreciatively and drains the rest of his glass. A few drops of red wine cling to the bottom of it, dregs caught in the dip where the stem begins. He sets the glass on the night table to his left, and keeps his right arm around Hux’s shoulders. “Not too bad.”

Ren completely leaves out the _Corellian vintage_ part, but Hux lets him, relaxing into the contour of his side. “I was saving it for a special occasion, but then I thought--”

“That any night with me fits the bill?” A smile teases the corners of Ren’s lips, and he shouldn’t be tipsy yet. They opened the bottle over dinner, and it’s only been one glass since they moved to the bed.

“Yes.” Hux rolls his eyes for show. “Every night a banquet with our fearless Leader.”

“I can see you’re planning on that.” Ren nods to the bottle of lube on Hux’s night table.

Hux laughs and traces a finger lazily down Ren’s chest, satisfied when his nipples perk beneath his undershirt. “If you’re amenable.”

“I don’t know,” Ren says, pursing his lips in a feeble attempt at a _sabacc_ face. He tips his head toward the gray ceiling panels, unable to hide his smile. “You might have to persuade me.”

“Well,” Hux starts, and drags his finger further down. “We could begin with--” He’s about to snap Ren’s waistband when the chime of an alert interrupts him. He’ll ignore it. It’s his own datapad--some lieutenant probably missent a daily activity report.

“Mute,” he tells it over his shoulder, peevish.

“ _Code Black_ ,” it replies. “ _Mute function disabled.”_

Hux swears at it, disentangling himself from Ren to dismiss it manually. He’ll have someone deal with the error tomorrow. Remedial training is apparently in order. He’s leaning over the edge of the mattress when a second, louder chime resounds from behind him. He looks back over his shoulder.

“That you?”

“Yeah,” Ren says, and picks up his own screaming device. “Fuck, it’s Unamo.” She has the bridge for the night cycle, and shouldn’t be contacting senior leadership unless it’s something both that she can’t handle, and that absolutely cannot wait eight hours.

Hux turns back to his own datapad, and sure enough, she’s calling them both at once. His pulse speeds up, and he swings his feet over the side of the bed to get out of range of Ren’s mic. The mattress shifts behind him, and Ren’s done the same. They hit _answer_ almost simultaneously, and twin Unamos appear over their screens, the width of the bed apart.

“Colonel?” Hux addresses her first. Brendol would have threatened that this ought to be urgent, disturbing him while he’s off-duty. Hux knows it must be.

“Sirs, I--” Her throat works, and her hands fidget at her sides. The nerves are uncharacteristic and unsettling. “I’m comming to report that a Resistance contingent of six vessels has just converged on us out of hyperspace.” Her gaze darts behind her, into an out-of-range nothingness that must be the viewport. The shark-infested waters around their waterlogged dinghy. She turns back almost as quickly. “Orders?”

Hux’s instinctive response is _Alert the rest of the fleet, damn it. Call for reinforcements._ It’s nearly out of his mouth, on conditioning alone, before he remembers that there is no fleet, at least no more real warships, and nothing at all within range. That shouldn’t be a problem: they’re deep in the Eastern Reaches, nearly to Wild Space. Well-hidden and licking their wounds. They shouldn’t have been found, but the rebels must have gotten their hands on some highly encrypted comms. Or another defector.

“Which ships?” Ren asks, before Hux can drum up anything coherent. It should be a stupid question, but it could also mean he’s trying to assess what they’re up against. That would have been _what kind of ships,_ though. _Which_ suggests an interest in the occupants.

_Nubian Pride, Andor,_ and four others whose names evoke the Republic’s bloody and whitewashed past. It’s impossible they don’t know that the _Finalizer_ ’s set to refuel tomorrow. That there’s a standard amount of surplus fuel, but that it’s hardly enough to sustain maximum-strength shields during a bombardment from six directions, much less an escape into hyperspace.

Nonetheless, Hux orders her to raise the shields. There’s nothing else that can be done. “I’ll join you shortly, Colonel,” he tells her. “Thank you.” And ends the transmission with shaking fingers.

Ren echoes his thanks a moment after, hollowly. He jabs at his datapad before tossing it onto the bed. “Fucking shit,” he says, swallowing. He runs a hand through his hair almost compulsively, and a Force-borne shockwave ripples through the air. Both wine glasses rattle on the nightstands, fall to the floor, shatter. “Fucking _shit_.”

So Ren’s just going to stand there cursing, destroying inoffensive Order property. Helpful. So motherfucking helpful, like he and his Force always fucking are.

“That’s all you have to say?” Hux all but spits. He starts for the clean uniform he’d laid out an hour ago, with the lube.

Ren ignores him, and doesn’t move. “They’re here,” he says, uselessly. “The Jedi and. Organa.” There’s a quiver in his voice, but it’s nothing unusual when it comes to the Resistance leadership.

Hux steps into his jodhpurs, gives him a synthetic and mirthless smile. “Then how good of them to come to you, yes?”

“It’s too late,” Ren says. “They can take us down without any of that, with the guns alone, so I’ll have to--”

“Have to _what_?” Hux throws his tunic over his head, smooths out the creases. His hands haven’t stopped shaking, and his belt looks daunting. “Go down with the ship?”

“They’re going to board us, Hux.”

“Why?” Hux fumbles with the belt clasp, skin paperwhite against the stark gleam of the metal. “They don’t tend to have any qualms about maximum casualties.”

“If they blow us up, they won’t be able to pick out you and me from the rest of the organic debris. They’ll need proof of life or death. And then there’s--” Ren pauses, and Hux can sense him gnawing his lip, for all he’s intent on the belt. “--me.”

Hux snorts, finally fastens the clasp. “You think they’ll spare you? Because they think you’re _Ben_?”

“It’s both,” Ren says, a bit more harshly, but otherwise with no reaction to the invocation of the dead boy. He has a point on the proof of death, and he probably isn’t presuming overly much on his mother’s sentiments. “I can’t face them, Hux. Not like this. I can’t--”

Hux cuts his eyes to him. “Unfortunately, you have no other choice. You are the Supreme Leader, and they’re enemies of the state. It’s your respons--”

“There is no state, Hux!” There’s a certain cold electricity spiking Ren’s tone. It chills Hux’s skin even under the long sleeves of his tunic. “There’s nothing left. There’s nothing we can do.”

The audacity of him. It wasn’t his eight years in the Order that taught him that _nothing_ is ever a viable course of action, but knowing the Resistance, it seems unlikely he got it from his upbringing either. It’s a fabrication of his brain, which makes it nearly impossible to refute. Still, Hux will keep trying.

“You always say that. You always fucking say that,” he says, and it comes out vicious. He calms himself. He needs to put his boots on. His coat, too. He’s lecturing Ren in his socks. “And every time, you get over it and keep going. Now is no different.”

“It _is_ different,” Ren says, fevered, insistent.

Hux sighs. “How so?”

“Look at the odds!” As usual, of everything he’s apparently feeling at once, all that materializes aloud is anger. “They came for the rest of the fleet, and you saw what happened. Did you honestly ever think things could go any other way?”

It’s insulting. It’s outright insulting, the implicit idea that _this could never work_. That they’ve--that _Hux_ has wasted his life fighting the inevitable. Fuck him.

“So I’m in over my head,” Hux scoffs, and jerks the boot-laces tight. He stands upright again, wearing his best sneer. “Speak for yourself and your Force, Ren.”

“And you really think you have nothing to do with that?” Ren’s voice is low and dangerous, now full of volcanic heat. He walks toward Hux, and it takes an undue amount of resolve not to step back.

“Well, yes.” It’s cheeky, but Hux has an argument to support it, based mostly on evidence out of Ren’s own mouth.

Ren doesn’t let him finish, though. He’s closed the distance between himself and Hux, putting them chest-to-chest, toe-to-toe.  “What do you think it was that fucked with the Force? I can sense it, yeah, but you. You prosecute the most brutal military strategy in history, kill and oppress billions, and you think _I’m_ the problem with the balance.” Ren’s voice is pitched upward with emotion, and his eyes glitter, darting madly. “How many fucking times have I said it has to swing back?”

“Yet you always went along with me,” Hux retorts. _You goddamn hypocrite._ “You would say your piece about the Force, then you’d get your shit together and carry out the plan. You could have stopped at any point. You didn’t.”

“That’s because I trusted you!” Ren swallows, breathes in. Fails to calm himself entirely. “Clearly I shouldn’t have.”

Hux recoils as if struck. Leave it to Ren to blame his failures on the Force, on his one-time family, on Hux and his policies. On anyone but himself.

“ _Perhaps_ ,” Hux bites out, and holds Ren’s gaze, “what you should have done was spend less time worrying about my business and more time on the Jedi. Perhaps there’s nothing you can do about the light, but surely eliminating her would have slowed it down.”

“The Light would have just found a new vessel. It wouldn’t have changed what you did.”

“No,” Hux admits, “but it might have made us untouchable. That should have been your goal, not some...nebulous metaphysical balance.”

Ren’s doing his best to loom over him, as deep into his personal space as possible while fully clothed. His lips curl up when he speaks, showing teeth. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

This is a moot argument, Hux realizes, with Ren’s face centimeters from his own. He can’t change Ren’s theology--the best he can hope for is his course of action. Hux breathes in, shuts his eyes for a second. Collects himself.

“I know I don’t,” he says, carefully. “But if it’s--if _you’re_ \--as strong as you describe, it should leave you some response besides surrender.”

In the seconds before Ren responds, some of his rage seems to dissipates. His posture loosens, eyes flick briefly down. The anger’s still there, smouldering, but for now it’s washed over by pain.

“That’s the problem,” he says, voice shot through with cracks. “It pulls me both ways, and I can’t fucking _move_.”

It makes sense, but it won’t save the _Finalizer_. “Move anyway,” Hux says. “You have to. Try something, anything.”

Ren doesn’t answer for a long moment. His teeth work his lower lip, and he studies his own bare feet, flush with the dull shine of Hux’s boots. “There’s something,” he says, finally, as flatly as is possible for Kylo Ren.

“Good,” Hux says. “So get dressed and go try it.”

“I need to meditate first.” Ren looks over Hux’s shoulder, past him to the blank wall. “Prepare myself.”

“In here?” Hux asks, hoping to be gainsaid.

“Yes, I need to be alone.”

_Fuck._ Quiet reflection has never done a damn thing for Ren before, nor has solitude, but perhaps whatever this feat is requires some backstock of strength he’ll need to draw from. It’s terrible form for him to stay behind, but the crew know he’s erratic, and they’re smart enough to assume he’s doing what he can.

Still, Ren needs accountability. “How long will it take?”

“I don’t know.”

“For fuck’s sake, give me an estimate.” Hux bites his lip, almost too hard, and breaks eye contact against his will. “The ship may not have long.”

“I said I don’t _know_. What do you think of me, that I’ll just hide in here?”

“No,” Hux says, defensive. He’s called Ren many things, but never a coward. But indecisive, yes. And of divided loyalties. Now, however, isn’t the time to say as much. “I just need to know how long to hold them off.”

“You’ll just have to trust me,” Ren replies, as if overhearing his thoughts. His tone is all vitriol, oozing hazard. “I know that’s difficult for you.”

Hux bites back a scathing reply. Neither is now the time to relive Starkiller, nor Snoke’s ravaged throne room, nor Crait. “I trust you,” he snaps. “I firmly believe you’ll be on the bridge before we’re all dead, Supreme Leader. Happy?”

“Sure,” Ren says, with the air of stomping his foot, though he stays deathly still.

“All right.” Hux grabs his coat from the hook beside him, throws it over his shoulders. He straightens the collar and tugs at the sleeves, then pulls on his gloves. Ren’s still in his undershirt and training pants. Hux half-turns toward the door, announcing over his shoulder, “I’ll go ahead and--”

Before he can finish, Ren’s hand is around his bicep, big enough to make substantial progress around the circumference even of the greatcoat. Ren leans in and crushes his lips against Hux’s, warm and plush and still sticky with the Imperial vintage. It takes Hux a second to even begin to respond, to relax into Ren’s grip and the press of his mouth, against his better judgment and the impending storm on the bridge. He parts his lips, but Ren doesn’t seek entry.

Instead he pulls back slightly, sucking on Hux’s lower lip for a few euphoric seconds before withdrawing completely. He squeezes Hux’s arm, then lets his hand drop. That shouldn’t feel disappointing, after everything he’s said to Hux, accused him of. ( _“You really think_ I’m _the problem?”)_ Hux will win the fight later.  
  
For now, he inhales, rubs his lips together. His face is warm, and hopefully the crew will be too distraught to notice. “I’ll see you,” he tells Ren.  
  
“Yeah.”

As soon as Hux is out the door, he extracts his earpiece from inside the greatcoat and puts it in, to be immediately inundated with incoherent streams of bad news, cutting in and out and over one another like ecumenopolis graffiti :  “ _Fuel at twenty-five--”_

_“TIE lost. That leaves--”_

_“ A sixth Republic ship is emerging from hyper--”_

_“--cent and draining fast.”_

_“--teen in this squadron.”_

_“Shields will last approximately--”_

Hux swallows, clenches his fists, and leaves the updates live.

When he arrives, the bridge is in no more orderly a state than the comms channels. Outside the viewport loom the predatory outlines of only three of the Republican destroyers that have hemmed them in. The others are attacking the stern, out of the bridge’s view.

At alarmingly regular intervals, orange starbursts flare up between the Destroyers’ guns and the X-wing offensive line. They immediately darken, leaving behind the charred, expensive husks of TIEs.

“Grand Marshal?”

Hux doesn’t know the officer’s name, but if there were any chance the _Finalizer_ would survive this, he’d look it up and promote her: her voice is even, level. It’s all to her conditioning’s credit (to Hux’s credit), but still--she’s coping well for a person who can’t possibly be oblivious to the fact she’s as good as dead.

“Lieutenant.”

“We’ve prepared a briefing for yourself and the Supreme Leader, sir.” She inclines her head. “Would you like to hear it now or wait till he arrives?”

Hux purses his lips for a moment. Outside the transparisteel, another TIE ignites. A glance at the holotank beside him shows the blue outline of a projected fighter erupt into bright red, an ugly _x_ cutting through it. “Give it to me now.”

The briefing doesn’t tell him much he hasn’t already surmised from the transmission snippets and the chaos out the viewport. Bottom line: without some intervention of the Force, they’re fucked.

Over the next two hours the holotank fills with the red silhouettes of wasted starfighters. The space between the _Finalizer_ and the Republic fleet grows cluttered with blackened debris. This must have been how Rax felt, watching the Imperial Navy plummet ship by ship into the sands of Jakku. Waiting on Palpatine’s contingency to come through.

Ren doesn’t appear.

For all his assurances that he’s no coward, for all his insistence (not just today, but since the end began) that he won’t give up, he doesn’t appear. Pacing in front of the viewport, tone tightening with every fresh command he gives, Hux waits.

He waits until he can’t take it anymore, and fuel is at fifteen percent, and they’re down to their last two TIE squadrons, and this is going nowhere, fast. He gives command to Unamo, and heads into the corridor, toward Ren’s chambers.

Once off the bridge, the din of transmissions from the other decks becomes starkly audible. It’s the gruesome collage again, all incomplete pieces forming an unpalatable whole:

_“--fighters lost. Eight remaining in the--”_

_“Recommend partially lowering--”_

_“--malfunction on fourth deck. Backup requested.”_

_“Taking fire. Taking fire.”_

_“--to conserve fuel.”_

Halfway to Ren’s door, he experimentally mutes the earpiece, dials Ren’s frequency on the off chance he’ll actually pick up. He doesn’t, the jackass, the traitor. Hux lets the cacophony in his ear resurface under the sharp click of his boots.

Hux shouldn’t be having to do this. Firefights are Ren’s forte. Even if he doesn’t want to be on the bridge, he could at least jump in a starfighter and lead some kind of lucky TIE formation. Whatever it is he’s supposedly preparing in the Force--if it’s anything at all besides some kind of colossal meltdown--can’t possibly be that reliable if it’s taking him this long to figure out. Leave it to Ren to waste time and what he doesn’t realize is one of the Order’s most valuable resources: himself.

By the time Hux reaches Ren’s door, he’s had it. He presses-to-talk on the comm mounted there.

“Ren. It’s about time you were of use.”

Static. Naturally. The man is impossible.

“Open this damn door, or Force help me I will take a grenade to it.”

Even that doesn’t merit a sardonic response about how Hux _would never_. It’s infuriating when Ren gets petulant like this, especially when he’s critically needed. It’s fucking selfish, that’s what it is.

Hux jabs at the _talk_ button, pushes it down till it clicks in its setting. “Get the _fuck_ out here, you son-of-a-bitch! You aren’t the only one on this fucking ship.”

Hux hardly gives Ren a second to respond before he’s extracting his code cylinder from his coat pocket. He scans it under the mounted comm, which announces, _Override accepted_. It flashes green as the doors slide open.

“I don’t know what the _hell_ you think--” Hux starts, before he’s fully in the room.

_“Taking fire,”_ rings in his earpiece.

Before he’s registered anything.

_“Taking fire.”_

Before he sees.

Ren’s seated on the floor. His back is braced against the side of the bed, but he’s slumped forward, hair entirely shielding the side of his face. His legs are sprawled in front of him, but the right one, closest to Hux, is twisted at an unnatural angle, as if it froze halfway through a muscle spasm. His lightsaber lies beside his open palm, on the ground beside his partially curled fingers.

“Ren.” Hux isn’t sure if he breathes it or yells it. The edges of his vision darken and blur. It feels like his stomach has dropped out of his body and clear through the floor.

“No.”  
  
Only later will he remember how he got to his knees beside Ren’s slumped form. Remember running from the doorway and crumpling to the floor, stripping off his gloves.

He wraps his hands around Ren’s throat, clawing for a pulse. The skin is cold.

The wound, a paradoxically tidy, circular burn over Ren’s heart, blends in with his dark clothes. It was invisible from the doorway; from this angle, no longer.

“What did you do, what did you do, what did you do, how could you do this.” Hux is babbling, and hardly hears it.

He puts a hand before Ren’s lips. There’s no exhale.

“Fuck.” He nearly gags on the syllable. It feels like the floor is spinning, threatening to capsize. His vision tunnels again, swimming with black spots as the blood rushes out of his head. “Gods. Fuck. Fuck.”

At first he’s shaking Ren, futilely, furiously; then his hands are in his own hair, and all he can say is _fuck_ , between increasingly shallow breaths.  
  
“ _Taking fire. Taking fire._ " Hux yanks the comm out of his ear, tosses it across the floor without really seeing it. It beeps and vibrates; the sound seems far off, as if filtered through a black hole. " _Taking fire, taking fire._ "  
  
He leans against the bed himself, sitting beside Ren.

The ship is going down. This won’t last long. He can think nothing else.

His face is wet, and he’s short of breath. His whole body shudders. On impulse, because it’s always been unbearable to be close to Ren without touching him, Hux reaches over blindly, groping for Ren’s hair.

Nothing’s changed about it. It’s soft under his fingers, thick and excessive, and so very much _him_ that it’s easy to pretend he’s asleep. He strokes Ren’s hair without looking at him, unsteady fingers snagging on tangles, working through them. It takes several strokes for Hux’s shaking fingers falter, to brush Ren’s skin.

It’s cold, so terribly cold. It could leech all the heat from Hux’s bloodstream, from the whole galaxy. Hux recoils instantly.

This isn’t possible. Ren said he wouldn’t give up.

This couldn’t have happened. Hux couldn’t have let it.

The room reels around him, which could be the fault of a missile or of Hux’s own nerves. It doesn’t matter. Ren is the only grounding thing in the universe, and Hux won’t sit here untethered. He finds Ren’s hair again, sparing a glance at his profile before looking away again, into nothingness.

He runs his fingers through the same spot over and over again, compulsively, making sure not to touch skin.

That’s how they find him an hour later, once Unamo surrenders. He doesn’t put up a fight. He can’t. He can see his body, his arms, his legs, but even they feel distant. He can’t imagine trying to control them, treating them like his own.

His wrist throbs once his fingers are out of Ren’s hair, on fire after an hour of rapid motion. The metal of the binders is cool by contrast, biting the skin.

So the wrist is his. So the rebels have won.

So Ren is dead.

.

 

.

  
The memory ends abruptly, of its own accord, as there’s little concrete that Hux can recall about the twelve hours that followed. Rey should be fairly well informed about anything after that, that happened once he was in custody.

She sits in silence across from him, stone-faced, fingers curled loosely around the hilt of her lightsaber. She has nothing to say, no comment to return them to the topic of Ren’s signs and symptoms. It’s glaringly apparent that he caught Hux off-guard.

The silence stretches, impatient. Hux wants to get out of here, so he fills it.  
  
"I should have killed myself,” he offers, “then and there. It would have been better.”  
  
Rey purses her lips for a second before responding. "Perhaps." It feels like a concession, though there’s still an edge to her tone.  
  
Hux notes that his throat is tight, but files that away for later. He attempts to rationalize.  "I suppose I just never thought you would want to take me alive."  
  
"Then you underestimated our principles, Armitage,” Rey replies, the edge unsheathed and fierce. “Or did you confuse them with your own?"  
  
Hux bristles but ignores her. "I thought the ship was going down.” That much is true, but it isn’t enough. He doesn’t have the words for the _paralysis_ that overtook him, the void that yawned open under his feet. Never mind that she’s been his head, seen it firsthand: he fabricates something, anything, to explain himself.

“I thought the ship was going down,” he repeats, “so I thought, what the hell, I'll just hold onto him until it's over, and we're just a bunch of... _organic debris_ floating through the void. They pried my hands off of him, and I didn’t even care they’d seen it. He was cold.” The lump in his throat has taken over, and he’s somehow switched from calculated deception to outright babble. He can’t stop yet. “That's it. That's--what I've got left."

"'What you've got left,'" Rey echoes, more vitriol in her voice than he's ever heard from her. "I'm glad you said that."

She pauses, but not long enough for Hux to manage sufficiently caustic wording for the question  _why_. When she continues, it's all sharp teeth and snarl.

"I very nearly felt sorry for you, watching that. But then, it was about  _you."_ Her fingers tighten around the saber, veins popping green in her thin, callused hands. "He was right, you know. About your _strategy._ He clearly knew better. He just tried to ignore--"

Hux cuts her off, despite the growing tremor in his voice. "There would have been no other way. Neither of us knew it was going to turn out like..." He sniffs an inhale, casts a surveyor's gaze around the room, and gestures vaguely to all of it, hand waving in the cuff.

"He suspected."

"He could have stopped at any time," Hux retorts. "Did we?"

Rey's eyes flash, the spark of anger there mirroring Ren like nothing else. "This is what you deserve," she spits. "It's what he'd deserve too, if--"

Rey stops abruptly. There are tears in her eyes, and she swallows hard. This is about more than just Hux’s politics, that much he can discern. For one thing, she hasn’t accused him of spurring Ren to suicide, for all she’s ready to eviscerate his entire career.

The memory must have shaken her. Ren’s death must have been a world-shattering disturbance in the Force. She's lashing out, as he might have done.

But.

She isn’t quite wrong.

Knowing this -- how it all ended in solitary confinement, and blubbing in front of the enemy in this freezing conference room, and decades without the only person who ever mattered -- Hux might have chosen differently. One unstable year of de facto galactic emperorship may not, in fact, have been worth forty more of _this_.

But he can’t say so.

"Do you want my information or not?" Somehow, his voice emerges clipped, quiet, and even.  "I don't require a second sentencing."

Rey seems to gather herself, shutting her eyes and inhaling deeply. Ren might have called it grounding himself in the Force. Might have done it after sex or before meditating. It never worked so well for him as it does for Rey now. Her chest rises and falls, and when she re-opens her eyes she doesn’t acknowledge Hux.

She comms for the wardens and leaves the room without another word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: Hux finds Kylo dead 1-2 hours after his suicide by lightsaber. They didn't part on good terms, to include a bitter argument and a less-than-consensual kiss. Upon finding him, Hux more or less snaps, and has something close to a dissociative episode. 
> 
> **To avoid, skip the second half of the second flashback, starting after "You aren't the only one on this fucking ship."**  
> .
> 
> On a lighter note, we're halfway through this thing! The second half of the fic remains written and in need of editing, but I'll be taking a two-week hiatus to post my two-part Titleception fic instead. (Please accept it as an apology for this chapter?)
> 
> Also: a huge thank-you to everyone who's commented, subscribed, bookmarked, RT'ed, liked, and/or (of course!) just kept reading. Love y'all! <3


	7. A Vergence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter, Hux showed Rey the worst memory he has. She didn't handle it particularly well, and this chapter starts with her attempt to make amends the next day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Four weeks, a mental health crisis, and 30K of happier fic later, I'm back from my two-week hiatus. Thanks so much for your patience! <3 Posting will be weekly for the next six weeks as we wrap things up.
> 
> No additional content warnings for this chapter, but I do cite a source *ahem*Wookieepedia*ahem*, as this chapter introduces a lesser known canon/Legends element that will be developed on for the rest of the fic. In case anyone's curious about how much of this I'm bullshitting.
> 
> Anyway, thanks again for reading, and let's get back to Chandrila Supermax.

The next day, it’s after the third meal--1935 hours, by the chrono hanging across the hall from Hux’s cell--before they come for him. Hux sets down his stylus halfway through his page of dots and shuts the flimsipad. It’s all standard:  _ Zero-six-one-nine-nine, a visitor;  _ binders; a stern-faced guard on each arm; the absurd parade through the corridors. 

Hux hardly regards the cell doors they pass, nor the transition from the dim inmate quarters to the fluorescents of penitentiary services. It’s only when they miss the turn toward the visiting areas that he’s recalled to reality by a burst of adrenaline.  _ This is wrong.  _

There may be little to fear here outside his own skull, routines don’t just  _ change  _ in prison. Anxiety unfurls in the pit of his stomach.

He could ask, but he isn’t sure the wardens will respond. He saves himself the dual embarrassment of failure and of displaying ignorance, and keeps his mouth shut, pulse creeping upward. 

They pass a long, low-ceilinged room with double doors propped open. By the glint of metal tables, it must be the mess hall for the lower security wing of the prison. He hasn’t been over here before, but they’d have said something if this was a transfer. Besides, he’s sure no good behavior is good enough to ease a sentence for genocide.

The guards keep up their pace, hurrying him along. They finally pause outside an unlabeled door, frosted transparisteel framed by gray metal. The light seeping through the translucent glass is purplish. One of the guards presses a thumb to the panel beside it, and it slides back, letting in a breeze.

A  _ breeze _ . It carries the scent of summer, as far as Hux can recognize it: green and vibrant, unquenchable.

On the other side is a grass-carpeted courtyard, enclosed on all sides by two storeys of gray prison walls. They throw the long shadows of early dusk across the well-trimmed lawn, engulfing three tables and several low flower beds, which burst with reds, yellows, and pinks, even in the low light. 

By the far end of the plot to Hux’s left sits Rey, cross-legged, eyes shut. Her hair is down, but pulled back from her face, and the breeze teases a few stray wisps of it across her forehead. A sunken patch of grass beside her must mark the lightsaber.

Hux bites his lip and tries to absorb this. Since when does he get to go outside? Since when does Rey come to the prison to meditate? His pulse has slowed with the apparent lack of threat, but his thoughts churn.

Seeming to notice that the door has opened, Rey turns at the waist to acknowledge the newcomers, then scrambles to her feet and approaches the entrance, leaving her saber behind. She addresses the guards of course, with a muted but genuine smile, assures them she can take it from here. She nods to Hux, a sort of beckon, and he steps over the threshold into thick, springy grass. He can’t remember the last time he’s felt any.

Decades aboard star destroyers prepared him well for the indoor life of solitary confinement, so he hasn’t realized how much one can  _ miss _ the outdoors. He tips his head toward the darkening sky--mostly periwinkle, shot low with the orange-and-rose of sunset--and breathes in, long and slow. The wind carries the scent of the flowers--too pungent, but in a better way than the prison’s antiseptic-dipped interior. All at once, he feels terribly alone.

“Do you want out of those?” Rey cuts through his thoughts as he’s on the cusp of a nebulous melancholy. Hux looks back down to meet her gaze, and she’s indicating the binders.

“Are you taking a survey?” he shoots back.

“No,” she says, and flicks her wrist upward. The binders flash red, then green, then they open, falling to Hux’s feet. She gives him a funny, self-satisfied smile as he flexes his fingers, bends his wrists. “You’re welcome.”

Hux takes advantage of the opportunity to clasp his hands behind his back. “What is this?” he says, with a hint of venom.

Rey studies her feet for a moment (they’re bare, Hux notices, toes buried in the grass), then looks back up at him. “An apology.”

“An apology,” Hux echoes, flat with incredulity.

“For yesterday. I was--” Rey pauses, nearly wincing. “I didn’t respond as I should have. You showed me something horrible, more horrible than anything I can imagine, and I just-- got angry. I shouldn’t have. And I’m sorry.”

Hux picks at a hangnail behind his back. “Decent of you to say.” Apologizing had better not become a trend between them: he’s done nothing  _ but  _ get angry with Rey, which usually emerges in the form of profanity or biting insults.

Fortunately, Rey doesn’t seem to be expecting anything in return. “I thought you might like it out here for a change.”

“You thought it would  _ help _ ?” For some reason, Hux immediately regrets the sharpness of his tone.

Rey’s jaw clenches, but the shadow of something like disappointment falls across her features. She angles her chin upward. “We can always go back inside, if you’d pref--”

“No.” Hux cuts her off as another breeze tumbles through, ruffling the hair at the back of his neck, where it nearly brushes his collar. “Thank you,” he says. “I’d rather stay out.” It feels absurd, humiliating, like he’s some sort of tamed animal, let loose from its cage to play.

“I’m glad.” Rey smiles in case Hux doesn’t believe her. “Would you rather walk or sit?”

“Walk,” Hux says, immediately. The only exercise he gets is the circuit from his cell to Private Conference Two and back. 

“Good, same here.” Rey frowns down at the grass, at the standard-issue rubber shoes Hux is wearing. “Do you want to take those off, too?”

Hux’s initial response is  _ fuck no _ . You don’t just walk around on a foreign planet--on enemy territory--with your bare skin exposed to whatever toxins are in the soil, whatever microbes and viruses dwell on the flora. 

The last time he did it must have been Naboo, and he was too drunk at the time to remember it properly. He shouldn’t here, but then again, what the hell. What’s the worst exposure to Chandrilan terrain can do, kill him? (If only the universe would be so kind.)

He slips out of the shoes, then peels off his socks, standing first on his right foot, then the left. The grass is cool on the soles of his feet, soft and yielding. He massages it with his toes, acclimating himself to the feel of it. Ren would have laughed to see this. Not the Rey part, but Hux with his hair long and three days’ of scruff on his chin, barefoot, with his face to the sunset.

“Better, right?” Rey says, then half-pivots and beckons him to walk beside her.

Hux manages a simper and complies. After a few quiet paces, he asks, as blandly as possible, “So what am I showing you tonight?” It seems like it should be a difficult feat to share a memory while upright and walking, but if Rey thinks it’s possible, it must be.

“Nothing.” Alright, so she doesn’t think so. “I’d just like to talk, if that’s okay.”

“You’d just like to talk? Aren’t you supposed to be pumping me for information?”

“Who’s to say I won’t be pumping you for information while we talk?” Were she addressing anyone else in the galaxy, Hux would call her tone teasing. They pass the second flowerbed, all Rebel-orange gargrells. 

Hux frowns. He isn’t here for banter. “Didn’t you tell me it’s more efficient to just look at the memories? None of my biases and all that?”

“That was before I--  _ knew _ about the two of you. It’s pretty obvious you’ve got a lot of insight about him. But besides all that, you’re--” Rey pauses, takes a breath. “--really the only person I can discuss him with.”

Whatever bizarre intimacy Rey’s imagining, Hux wants nothing to do with it. “What about Organa? Isn’t she on your interviewee list?”

“Of course,” Rey says, “but it’s different with her. Because I never knew Ben, you know?”

Hux sneers. “I thought that’s what you always called him.”

“I was wrong.”

Rey sounds so penitent, so truly regretful, that Hux doesn’t rub her nose in it. Firstly, that would be stooping; secondly, it would be ungrateful, after she’s brought him outdoors and let him take off his shoes and binders; and thirdly, well-- he’s in no position to gloat. 

Ren offed himself on Hux’s watch, not Rey’s. The life the Light offered him couldn’t satisfy him, but the Dark he’d chosen--the life Hux had tried to give him--was what broke him.

Hux clears his throat, keeps his voice as flat as possible. “I suppose we both tried to fix him, didn’t we?” 

It takes Rey a moment to respond. Maybe she’s shocked to get something remotely civil out of Hux, any admission of solidarity. “To save him,” she finally says. “At least that’s what I thought I was doing.”

_ Me too _ , Hux doesn’t say. 

Rey keeps going. “Whenever I thought about it, his path was always so obvious to me in the Force. But I think--I think I was mistaking the path I knew he  _ should  _ take for the path that was inevitable. I thought he  _ would  _ come back to the Light. It was going to happen. All I had to do was just--  _ enough _ .”

“And you didn’t,” Hux supplies, hoping it comes out as gently as intended. His tone is soft, anyway. “Nothing was enough. For either of us.” His voice cracks on the last word, and he swallows, hard. He isn’t going to cry; he isn’t. He studies the grass. 

Violet has crept across the sky, and the fireflies have come out, buzzing over the blades of grass. They weave between Hux and Rey’s ankles, thoraxes blinking yellow in the gathering twilight.

“I couldn’t defeat him, either,” Rey says. “At least you were single-minded. I--I could never decide if I had to rescue him or take him down. I’ve realized that was a weakness.”

“I’d say you defeated us pretty soundly.” It’s very nearly a deadpan, which is wrong on more levels than Hux wants to consider.

It gets a sad huff of laughter out of Rey, though. “That isn’t what I meant.”

“Then I’m sure he’d be relieved to hear you were just as conflicted as he was.”

“I wasn’t, though. Not in the same way,” Rey says, bending at the waist.

She holds her hand out, terribly still, and one of the insects hovers over her fingers, emitting a bioluminescent flare. She stands upright again, with the firefly on the tip of her right index finger. It crawls a few centimeters, crossing the first joint. In the graying light, Hux can still make out the redness of its tiny head, the slow twitch of its antennae, the pale yellow lines framing its black wings.

“I’ve never experienced the Dark like he did,” Rey says. “I mean, I’ve felt it pulling me at different times, and some of those were his fault. But I always got the impression that it was-- _ constant _ for him.” The firefly beats its wings, blinks once--sulfur yellow--and flies off. 

Hux watches the insect until it disappears into the shadows. “It was,” he says. “From both sides. He always thought that made him  _ weak _ . He didn’t realize.”

“Realize what?” Rey’s voice is soft, genuinely curious.

Hux wets his lips, digs his fingernails into his palms at his sides. There’s no right way to word this. “I don’t,” he starts, “understand any of this shit. I’ve never claimed to. All I know-- is that he woke up every morning of his life, and fought his own fucking brain, that was telling him he was weak and worthless and doing the wrong thing. And that he won over ten thousand times, but only lost once. And I--” Damn his voice, it’s splintering again. “--I think that’s extraordinary.”

Rey’s quiet for a moment, and Hux risks a glance at her, blinking back tears, swallowing the lump in his throat. A small smile curves her lips, very nearly wistful. “Stars,” she says softly, “you really do love him.”

Hux shouldn’t flush at that. Rey’s seen it all--seen them kissing and flirting and sharing food. Hell, she’s seen Ren fuck him. Still, the implication that he’s biased puts him on his dignity.

“What? It’s an objective fact. That’s what he did. It’s what he had to do.”

Rey’s smile doesn’t fade. “No, I completely agree with you. It’s just the way you put it. Quite...adoring.”

Against his will and better judgment, Hux’s lips curve upward too.  _ So what if I did adore him _ ? 

Crickets or some other native insect chirp in the third flowerbed, a species Hux doesn’t recognize, with pointed fuchsia petals. The sky is mostly lilac, and Rey says nothing, waiting.

“He was,” Hux says, and clears his throat again, not sure where this is going, “the most interesting person I ever met.” He stops short, the words suddenly viscous, stuck in the back of his throat.

“He was?” Rey echoes after a moment. It isn’t quite a question, but it’s certainly a prompt for more.

“You’d really like to hear this shit?”

“I said I wanted to talk to you. Go on.”

“Very well.” A breeze brushes Hux’s face, wafts the scent of the flowers toward him. He breathes it in, considering. 

“The Imperial system,” he starts, once it’s passed, “--and the Order’s after it--required conformity. So for the first twenty-seven years of my life, everyone around me was, for the most part, the same. The true believers wanted the same creeds I’d been reciting since before I could read. The corrupt ones wanted either glory or money.” 

He stops, imbeds his fingernails in his palms until they sting. He’s never said any of this out loud. He didn’t think he needed to. He certainly never thought he’d want to, and he still doesn’t quite. But Ren deserves it. Ren deserves for someone to know the truth, for it to  _ be said _ , documented to a witness, even if he’ll never hear it.

Hux inhales, exhales, and keeps going. “Then along comes Ren--Kylo--and he doesn’t want any of that--the new government or the fame or the wealth. At the time, I’m not sure what he wants, revenge or enlightenment or power or if he believes in anything. But he’s different.” 

With effort, Hux straightens his hands. Rhapsody over, he hurries back to the rest of the truth. “Of course that meant he did things differently. It was infuriating, but well--” He pauses again, and permits a reprise. “--it was also captivating.”

Rey doesn’t comment on any of it, just prompts again, entreating him to affirm or contradict. “I suppose you seemed different to him, too.” He knows the interrogation tactic, but fuck it. He’ll let it work.

“Different from the Jedi, I’m certain,” he says. “But he always said, in the beginning, that I was different from the other officers. I thought it was an insult at first. I wanted to be  _ better _ , you know, not just...different for its own sake.”

Rey nods encouragingly, sensing there’s more.

Hux indulges her, but ditches the sentiment. “I was never sure what he meant by it. Probably just that I told him  _ good job _ when he’d earned it and had sex with him several times a week.”

Rey actually laughs at that, quiet, but long enough that it’s unmistakable. It’s a funny, girlish giggle, which sounds ridiculous coming out of what is now the most powerful being in the known universe. (The rumble of Ren’s baritone better suited the role.) 

“I suppose that would have done the trick,” she says.

Hux has no response to that, and Rey poses no more questions. They complete the lap of the courtyard in silence, then another. Overhead, the sky turns indigo. Stars pepper it slowly, mote by mote, until the arm of the galaxy is visible, speckling the void between the brightest points. The crickets sing, and the fireflies blink, and Hux’s footsteps crush the grass, in sync with Rey’s. 

“I wanted to thank you,” she says, apropos of nothing. Hux tears his gaze from the stars, and she goes on. “For doing all of this. I didn’t realize what I was asking, when I first came to you. It can’t be easy, and it’s helping. A lot.”

Somehow, this isn’t the right time to remind her of his reward, of the contraband knife and the promise of oblivion. “It’s helping me, too,” he says, before he’s realized  he doesn’t just mean the chance to get out of his cell, or the times when the memories are so strong that the feel of Ren lingers in his mind afterward.

Hux isn’t sure if Ren would want his story told, but it feels right that it should be. That Hux should tell it, confess the things neither of them ever could. Ensure Ren’s remembered neither as guileless tyrant nor spineless victim. It’s the closest Hux can come to absolution.

 

* * *

The next afternoon, they meet back inside, but Rey releases Hux’s wrists as soon as the guards have left the room, then asks him how he is.

Hux doesn’t respond, instead meeting her eyes and tapping his free fingers on the tabletop. He clears his throat and grits out the prepared words that have been stuck there since he woke up this morning. 

“Since you started coming,” he says, carefully, “you’ve wanted to see all the ways I should have known what would happen.”

“Not  _ should _ , Armitage,” Rey corrects, too quickly, clearly recalling last night’s conversation. “I don’t think there was any way--”

“ _ Could _ , then,” Hux interrupts. “All the ways I  _ could _ have known, if you prefer. Regardless, I-- I have something for you.”

Hux clenches and unclenches his hands on the tabletop. He’s been acclimating himself to the notion of sharing this all morning, turning over something older than anything he’s yet given her. He couldn’t shake the memory after last night’s conversation--one of his first attempts at entering Ren’s world. 

Even then, in the midst of the desert campaign that preceded the talks by Hays Major’s mineral sea, Ren’s suicide had been germinating. Buried deep between layers of complex philosophy, watered only indirectly by Snoke, yet germinating nonetheless.

Hux isn’t sure what else he has to give, what else Rey could want, but she’s called him here again. And he has this.

“You do?” Rey’s brows climb her forehead, and she leans in.

“Yes,” Hux manages, “if you like.” With effort, he holds out his hand, baring his bony wrist to her.

“Obviously yes, of course,” Rey replies, but doesn’t touch him yet. “What makes you so forward about this one, all of a sudden?”

“What we talked about last night. The pull to the dark, and what--was or wasn’t inevitable.” Hux pauses, clears his throat. “This one is...older. But I think you should see it.”

Rey nods, gives him a wry smile. “All right, you’ve got me curious.” She reaches out and wraps her fingers around his wrist, a warm but unshakeable cuff. 

.

 

.

Hux is rinsing the grit out of his teeth when Ren appears in the entrance of his newly-pitched tent.

"General." Even the vocoder can't mask the softness of his tone. He's in full regalia, cowl and all. His robes brush the surface of the sand, hem blowing just far enough back to show he's barefoot underneath. Bent in the low doorway of the tent, the tilt of the mask looks inquisitive.

"Did the insurgents hit on our location?" They're almost entirely off the grid in Hays Major’s Skota Desert, having chased the local rebellion out of the capital, but there's a chance one of the Troopers' internal comlinks could have inadvertently pinged on a local signal. In which case they'll be moving campsites.

"No." One of Ren's gloves grips the side of the tent beside the entrance. "I wanted to show you something."

Hux sighs. "Show me what, Ren?" It had better be adequate to outrank sleep on his current list of priorities.

"The sky."

Hux rolls his eyes and takes a gulp of water. "All I do, all day every day, is look at the sky. I come planetside to get away from the sky. I can look at it whenever I want."

"Not like this." One finger taps the tent's fabric, a dark line on the tan camouflage. "Come on. You're not going to get much rest tonight." Ren tilts his head again. The mask looks smug.

Hux spares a glance at his bedroll and the lumps in the sand, showing through the bottom of the tent. "Fine," he says. "Briefly."

Ren turns, and Hux follows him out of the tent, without replacing his own boots. 

"This way," Ren says, and leads Hux beside the dune under which the battalion is camped. Within a few meters, the camp's dim watchlights begin to fade behind them, until the ruddy sand looks grey, and the dead, thick-rooted shrubs poking through it become harder to spot. 

"You should've brought a damn torch," Hux gripes, half-stumbling over a particularly prominent plant. Pain shoots through the sole of his foot as he steps onto the jut of a root.

"I can sense the way."

Hux resists the urge to parrot, 'I can sense the way' back at him in a nasal-sounding sneer. Which is just as well, because in the next moment, Ren's gloved fingers are slipping through his bare ones, and something unnameable clenches in Hux's chest.

It renders him speechless for a solid minute, while the camp grows dimmer behind. He lets Ren guide him, a generally inadvisable course of action. To make matters worse, Ren squeezes his hand at intervals, which is entirely unnecessary to the guidance process, and serves only to elevate Hux's pulse.

Once the camp is further back, the dune is to their right, and the rock formations sheltering the camp's other side are to their left, Ren tightens his grip again. "Stop here," he says. They stop. "Look up."

Hux looks up. It's a decent view--same stars, new constellations. Across one strip of sky hang the faint white patches that mark a distant arm of the galaxy, clinging to the vista like glowing wisps of fog.

"Yes, the whole Chommell sector looks like a cloud of toxic fumes from here," Hux says, head nonetheless tilted back, staring. "Gorgeous. Are you done?"

Ren's hand slips out of Hux's, and Hux would turn back toward the camp if not for the sudden hissing of the mask as Ren undoes the clasps. Hux turns to see him bending to place it in the sand.

Ren's features are still new to him, but their effect is less striking here in the darkness. Ren's form blends into the outline of the mesa behind him, a deeper shadow in the night. Then Ren lowers himself into the sand, cowl spread flat under his hair, hands clasped at the nape of his neck.

"Lie down," he says. The incline of his head is visible, a moving shadow against the monochrome sand. 

Hux snorts. "No."

"Afraid the sand will mess up your pomade?" Without the vocoder, even his sarcasm sounds somehow tender.

"N-" Hux starts.

"You can always borrow the mask."

"No," Hux says, then adds loftily: "I'm afraid I won't be able to get it out of my tunic." It's a feeble excuse--his tunic's a lost cause after today's march.

Regardless, Ren ignores him. "I want you to lie down."

Hux isn't sure if it's a bad attempt at a Force-trick, or if Ren's genuinely trying to sound pathetic and pleading. Whatever it is, Hux abruptly realizes he stands no chance against it.

"Very well," he says, and begins to ease down beside Ren. "Be aware you have fifteen standard minutes, then I go back."

"More than I was expecting." It sounds like Ren should be shrugging as he says it, if he could do so face-up on the ground.

Sand pricks the stinging place on the back of Hux's neck where his sunblock didn't quite reach. He laces his fingers a few centimeters above the burn--to keep his hair off the ground, Ren wasn’t entirely wrong--and bumps Ren's elbow with his own as he lies down. He scoots about a centimeter out of Ren's personal space, but Ren moves closer, letting the crook of his own arm rest lightly on top of Hux's.

A breeze blows over them, skittering sand and loosening a few strands of Hux's hair. The wind plays noisily among the rocks and crags in front of them, creating a rushing sound not unlike surf pounding the seashore. The Otomok system’s only other habitable planet, the ice world Hays Minor, glitters silver above an outcropping.

Impressive that you can actually see this many stars from the surface of any world. There are the spilled-milk clouds of the galactic arm, but also the faint clusters whose individual stars are still visible, your typical bright-white constellations, a few particularly brilliant pinpricks of light, planets or possibly satellites. From here, they provide more light than the camp does. 

They lie

in silence for a while. The weight of Ren's elbow is oddly grounding, keeping Hux present while his thoughts are on the verge of frenzy, between the next moves to finish this campaign, the urge to monitor the horizon for the headlights of approaching insurgency land speeders, and the slowly-dawning fact that Kylo fucking Ren has attempted what can only be considered a romantic gesture. 

Somehow, Hux stems the tide of Shit To Process, though dimly aware of it at the back of his mind, swirling against whatever mental embankment he or Ren has put up. At the moment, Ren's next to him, casually pinning him to the ground by one joint, and for some reason that's fine. 

The night is clear. It's so quiet here, aside from the wind. No engine humming, no squeal of blaster bolts. It's peaceful, even if he's lying in the dirt, and he'll have to rinse his mouth out again once he gets back to his tent.

Ren sighs lazily beside him, then says, "Watch closely in three, two--"

A horizontal beam of light streaks briefly across the sky, too white and quick to be a missile.

"A meteor," Hux says, nonplussed.

"I don't imagine you've seen too many of those, being shipside and everything for..." Ren doesn't need to say three decades.

"I've seen plenty of combusting space debris, Ren."

"But not entering a planet's atmosphere" Ren says, evenly. "In a ball of flame."

"Suppose not." Hux shifts briefly, brushing hair away from his dry lips and sand from his face with his free right hand. He leaves his left hand behind his head, unwilling to shrug Ren's arm off the elbow, then settles back down.

Beside him, Ren is staring straight up, his profile in shadow. From Hux's angle, the sharp prow of his nose obscures some of the light from the camp. Without turning his head, he says, "They're lucky in some cultures."

"Incineration isn't so lucky for stray debris."

Ren snorts at that. "Lucky that it doesn't hit the planet and take somebody's house out with it, I guess."

"Fair enough."

Ren doesn't reply, though his elbow presses Hux's arm just slightly deeper into the sand. The temperature has dropped since sundown, and for the first time since Hux arrived planetside this morning, he's grateful for his long sleeves. The wind is cool on his face.

After a moment, he asks, "What cultures?"

Ren makes a noncommittal sound, followed by, "Some Core Worlds, I think."

Hux doesn't ask which worlds, cuts straight to what he’s finding is the source of most of Ren’s superstitions. "So it's not a Jedi thing?"

Ren's quiet for a moment. An air transport passes far above, underbelly lights blinking green and red against the spackled sky. "The Jedi don't believe in luck," he says, "or chance, or fate, or coincidence." His voice takes on the lilt of quotation: "'All things are as the Force wills them.'"

The latter belief sounds like prison to Hux, like a blaster bolt bouncing between two ion shields, with no momentum to change its course or hit its mark. “So nothing happens on accident, and no one has any choice about it?”

"I wouldn’t say no one has any choice. It’s more like..." Ren fumbles for purchase, and in Hux's periphery, he turns to face Hux. Hux resolutely studies the stars. "It’s more like things are just  _ meant to be _ , or at least that's how they put it. They say every being makes their own choices, sure, but those choices all ultimately stem from the Force's influence. It's constantly striving for balance."

"Between...bright and shadow," Hux confirms, unsure what he has to add to that.

"Light and dark," Ren corrects, with an audible smirk. "But yeah."

Another meteor hits atmo, ignites, and disintegrates. Unlucky bastard.

After a moment Hux asks, "And do you believe like the Jedi?"

"I used to," Ren says, slowly, and a hint of his usual arrogance slips into his tone. "Then I came all the way to Snoke to prove them wrong." 

Hux knows the feeling. Either you become the subject of your own story, or the object in someone else's.

"You have already,” he says. “Proven them wrong, I mean. Your training and now, this." He inclines his head vaguely toward the camp, and means the war.

"I hope so," Ren says.

"And second proof-positive--" It tumbles out before Hux can stop it: "you came all the way to me." Thankfully it's too dark for Ren to see his face flush, though he can probably sense it.

"Lucky coincidence." Now it's a real smile Hux can hear, or the closest Ren can get to one. "I regret to report, Major, that the universe is chaos after all."

Hux could slap him, but resorts to a scoff. His tone warms against his will. "I suppose in this one case I can tolerate that."

"Good," Ren all but murmurs, and they both fall silent.

Hays Minor slowly climbs the horizon, mounting far above the precipice that first marked its position. The wind blows grit into Hux's face, and strands of his hair whip fitfully against his dry lips. Ren's arm is on his, and the world is quiet, but for the low note buzzing somewhere in the back of Hux’s brain.

Only one watchlight is left on in the camp by the time they rise, start to pick their way back, hand in hand, in the dark.

It takes longer than it should to reach the camp, and though the wind has stopped, the temperature has fallen considerably. He clings to Ren’s hand, the single point of warmth in the cold and dark, but his fingers must be going numb, because he can hardly feel Ren’s skin.

The watchlight never gets any closer, a resolute yellow pinprick on the horizon. Mirages don’t happen without the sun. Hux squeezes Ren’s hand, but only feels his own fist curling into itself. He takes his eyes off the watchlight for a moment to check Ren’s still at his side.

He can feel him--a low-grade pulse in the back of his mind, a frequency not quite properly tuned, but he’s disappeared into the night.

“Ren?”

He calls his name into the black, and turns back to the watchlight in time for the watchlight to blink out. 

But the watchlight never blinked out. This didn’t happen. They made it back to the camp, and Ren fell asleep in Hux’s tent. They slept like corpses until sunrise. 

He’s remembering wrong, or-- perhaps he’s broken the memory by acknowledging it as such, and he needs to get  _ out _ . Get back. 

He closes his eyes. When he opens them, he’ll be outside his head again, like he’s woken up.

But as soon as his eyes shut, darkness enfolds him, starless, even deeper than the night,. The memory’s over, and he should be returning to reality at any moment. Instead, the smothering blackness lingers; he can’t get out of it. 

It’s worse than the empty desert. It’s like he’s- remembering being asleep, or having a lucid dream that for some reason holds no sensory details. He tries calling for Rey, but the darkness has him bound and gagged. Maybe he’s caught between realities: existing neither in his memories nor reality, lost in his own mind or in the Force. 

He’s broken his memory, and he’s broken his brain, and his body’s going to enter a vegetative state, and he’ll live out the rest of his days unconscious, plugged into machines worth as much as a starfighter, and--

It’s a sudden spike of panic, the onrush of eventualities, but it soon crests and levels out. It’s hard to care here. The clamor of his thoughts is ungainly and unnecessary in this silence.

It’s quiet here, almost reverently so, but doesn’t feel empty. The darkness seems almost tangible, clogging all his senses, pressing in on him, not painfully, but in a way that makes it difficult to think of anything else. Like he’s caught indefinitely on the verge of sleep.

He isn’t sure how long passes like this before he becomes aware of the unmistakable sensation that he isn’t alone. A low hum slowly swells in the back of his mind. It isn’t quite to full volume before Hux recognizes it:

_ Ren _ . He’d know the feel of him anywhere, Force or no Force - the fine-tuned flicker of him, the way he fits against the contours of Hux’s mind. He feels like opening a window in this suffocating room. Like a cool wind blowing through, carrying on it a single, throbbing chord.

The memories must be recycling themselves. He’s felt this while Ren lived, felt it slightly, even on Hays Major. It’s a good sign, a change, something familiar. At least he isn’t stuck, maybe Rey can get him out somehow,. 

But Ren’s presence doesn’t stop at the familiar bounds. It grows stronger, wrapping around Hux until it’s a buffer between him and the shadows, graying them out to irrelevance. The sound or vibration or chord reverbs through his consciousness, overwhelming him. 

He shouts Ren’s name in every way he knows, but senses no acknowledgment

Still, there’s more of him, of the musical vibration, and a flicker of white appears, either far in the distance, or so small it’s just a single spark. Ren shouldn’t be linked with that. With light. Hux knows enough about the Force to be certain of this at least. 

Nonetheless, the brightness expands, until it’s burned the shadows invisible and dominates Hux’s surroundings. He finds his feet on solid ground - also white. There’s white swirling in the air, and the only spot of darkness is a bent, black-clad figure crouched about a meter from his feet. He’s cross-legged on the glaring ground.

“Ren!” It’s instinctive, but it means Hux’s voice is working again. Ren doesn’t look up. 

Hux makes to call out again, but the image dissolves into the grayer light of Private Conference Two.

Hux hasn’t stood up, but his vision swims with black blots, like the blood has drained from his head. He blinks, and looks down to find his hands shaking. He flexes his fingers, to no avail.

“Armitage?” Rey’s voice fully restores his awareness.

“What. What was that?” He sounds slurred and dizzy in his own ears.

Rey pops her lips, then looks down. “You tell me. It was your mind,” she says, but with a pleading edge, like she’s trying to convince herself.

“No, it wasn’t.” Hux’s consonants are taking better shape now. “I’ve never seen him like that. Sitting...wherever he was. And I  _ felt  _ him, Rey. Like after I showed you when we were planning for Ganthel, but...amplified.”

“I told you the Force is strong and unpredictable,” Rey offers. “I can’t control--”

“ _ Stop lying to me _ .” It’s been months since Hux issued an order, but he apparently hasn’t entirely lost his touch.

Rey takes a slow inhale and lifts her gaze. Her eyes are brown, but not as dark as Ren’s, usually with none of the storminess. Now, though, she’s rivaling him for conflicted looks. She clears her throat.

“Are you,” she starts, “aware of his and my  _ bond _ ?”

Hux bristles at the term. Ren and Rey had no such thing. “You mean Snoke’s attempt at driving you to our side? The Force-induced communications?”

“Yeah,” Rey says, “more or less. We both thought those ended the day Snoke died. And they did, for the most part.”

Hux knows when they ended, or were supposed to have. Because he knew Ren. He had an intimacy with Ren that Rey never could. That’s why she’s here, begging for even the most mundane memories. The latter part, though, still sets him on edge. 

“What do you mean  _ for the most part _ ?”

“It only happened two more times before he died,” Rey says. Hux has no response. He knows there were things that went on in the Force that Ren didn’t tell him, that he couldn’t understand, but meeting with Rey, that much he could have gotten his mind around. 

To Hux’s silence, Rey adds, “I suppose he didn’t tell you.” She thins her lips and glances down briefly, almost guiltily. She hardly looks her twenty years. “It wasn’t anything,” she says. “We couldn’t see each other’s surroundings, and we never spoke. It didn’t last long. There was nothing in the four months before he died. It wasn’t - whatever you’re thinking of.”

Ren had every right to his secrets, especially something like this, that would only piss Hux off and over which Ren had no control. And which had always been painful for him. 

Nonetheless, Hux is somehow disappointed.“That’s good to know,” he manages. This doesn’t answer his question, doesn’t tell him what he just felt and saw. Why his brain broke.

Rey more or less ignores him. “I wasn’t expecting it to happen again. Once he was gone, I mean. And it isn’t as if it happens often, but it’s just...”

“Just  _ what _ ?” She isn’t making any fucking sense. She can’t mean what she sounds like she’s trying to say.

“I’ve seen him,” she all but blurts, “since he died.”

The blood drains from Hux’s head again. “What?”

Rey keeps going, like Hux has breached some kind of dam. “Not exactly in the old way, either,” she’s saying. “It’s - almost more real, which didn’t make any sense, not until I started studying the Netherworld. I can see what’s around him, sometimes I even get a word or two out of him, it--”

Hux’s pulse has sped up, the dull blur of hurt replaced by curiosity and an undeniably jealous anger. The binders are cold against his wrists, and the edges of the table, the light from the lampdisk, the motion of Rey’s lips, appears in high definition, crisp and intense and far too much.

“Are you talking about a Force-ghost?” he asks, cutting her off, mind racing. 

Ren had been known to complain of ghosts, whether real or imagined Hux was never certain. (Where was the line, with the Force and Ren’s mind?) Regardless, he needs to act like he knows what he’s talking about, like he’s actually keeping up with Rey’s babble.

“No,” she says, “only the Light works that way, but-- It’s...part of the reason I’ve been studying him so much. Studying the Dark. I would regardless, but this-- this sort of thing calls for extra research.”

Rey stops abruptly, and her gaze falls, hands squirming on the table. 

Hux and the coldness in the pit of his stomach don’t let her stop. “And why is that?” he asks, measured.

“I don’t know how to put it, but I--” Rey looks back up, inhales long and deep. “I’ve been seeing him in the-  _ other realm _ , for Force-users. That’s what it’s got to be, from what I’ve read. It’s a place called Chaos, and it’s--”

“And this has been happening since he died?” Hux cuts her off, the full ramifications of his weeks speaking with Rey rapidly stacking up. 

She’s seemed less-than-frank often before--cagey, even--but the set of her shoulders and steadiness of her gaze show none of that now. For all Ren never said a damn thing about an  _ other realm,  _ Rey at least believes it’s true. 

And Hux. He must have seen it.

Rey doesn’t break eye contact, but her gaze softens almost apologetically.

“Yes, it has,” she answers him, already taking on that gushing, confessional pace, “not often, but it comes on spontaneously like this, and since I’ve been seeing you, it’s been worse because--” 

Rey pauses for several seconds, looking past Hux. He’s almost tempted to turn around to make sure no one’s coming in the door and catching her eye. There’s no pause, though, and Hux has to prompt her.

“Because of me?” It’s all he can manage, self-centered and inadequate, but at least it’s something. 

His heartbeat thunders in his ears, but there’s a part of him that isn’t surprised. That’s known some part of Ren would survive. His impression on the universe was far too indelible.

“Because that’s why I’m here, Armitage.” Rey’s voice tightens, tears suddenly rimming her eyes. “He doesn’t say much, whenever he says anything, but it’s always. About you.”

A dry lump forms almost immediately in Hux’s throat, and his eyes prickle to match Rey’s. He feels like he’s been slammed into a cold surface, wind ripped from his lungs. It hurts, but it’s almost a relief, in a vile and selfish way: the thought of a shade of Ren somewhere out there, just as miserable and lonely as he is. 

“What did he say?” Hux asks, when he’s found his voice again. 

Rey winces. “Not much. Just asked about you once or twice. What you were doing, if he could talk to you.”

“And what did you tell him?” 

“Nothing. I didn’t know what to say, or what he meant. I thought he was just worried about the fleet or something, but I- I realized that you might be a good source of information. Our connections are too sporadic for me to get anything from him, and he’s too--” Rey pauses, rubbing at her eyes. “-incoherent.”

The word shatters something inside Hux, so he swallows hard and blinks rapidly against the onslaught of emotion. His hands aren’t bound, but he’d still rather not have to wipe his face. He has this much dignity left.

“You could have told me,” he says, when he’s certain he can manage it.

“At first I wasn’t aware of how much you knew about him, or about the Force. I didn’t need to explain it all at the start - I didn’t think it mattered.”

“It matters.”

“And once I found out that it would - found out about the two of you, I mean - I didn’t see where it would help.” Rey laces her fingers on the table, looking recovered. She sits up straight, like the Force has just replaced her bones with steel. “You were already clearly so jealous of me, and besides no one wants to hear that the person they love is...in pain.” Her posture crumples a bit as she trails off.

“In pain?” Hux’s pulse spikes again.

“I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry.”

And Hux could ask a thousand more questions. Should get her tell him everything she knows and has read and has seen. She’d probably be responsive, given how she’s been lying to him for weeks and actually seem sorry about it.

But Hux doesn’t want second-hand information.  _ Information, _ for once, isn’t what he’s after. 

After a long moment, he meets her eyes and says, with a deadly certainty that would have once sent officers running: “I want to see him.”

Rey purses her lips, and there’s an unbearable softness in her gaze. She must have looked at Ren like this, have pitied him and called him  _ Solo _ . “You don’t,” she says. “You don’t want to see that.”

“I already did,” Hux spits back. “Show me him. Take me back to him.”

“No. It...doesn’t work like that.”

Hux sneers. “Which is it, you don’t want to do it, or you can’t?”

“Both.” Rey offers him a helpless shrug. 

“You can try,” Hux insists. “You lied to me for three months. It’s the least you can do.”

“I’m sorry, Armitage.”

“Let me see him, or you’re not getting one more fucking memory.” He hardly even knows what he’s asking, just that Ren is  _ there _ /

Ren still exists, and Hux felt him, and that’s all he wants. If he saw him just now, there has to be a way. Once the impossible has been done, it can be repeated.

“Armitage--”

“You owe me this,” Hux says simply.

She knows she does.

Rey studies him for a long moment, then looks down at her lap, almost guiltily. “I suppose I do,” she says, uncharacteristically grave. “I’ll try. Just this once. Give me your hand.”

He stretches his hand toward her as she unlaces her fingers. She takes his wrist, thumb on the pulsepoint, like she does for a memory, then closes her eyes. 

Hux watches her for a moment, jaw tight with concentration, her lips firm, eyes moving under closed lids, fingers latched onto him. Then darkness washes over him again, briefly, not long enough for it to thrum with Ren or to choke him.

He opens his eyes - he must have shut them, too, at some point - to the same white terrain as the first - vision? Visit? Whatever this is defies his vocabulary. Solid ground crunches under the rubber soles of his standard-issue shoes, and he takes in his surroundings.

Around him stretch glaring white salt flats, sprawled endlessly in every direction but that of the mine in front of him, its doors impenetrable. The sun isn’t visible, but the sky is white, which refracts off the ground to create an effect that’s blindingly bright. 

Hux blinks against the glare and against the wind that swirls mineral through the air in sloppy cyclones. They sting his eyes and bite his skin.    
  
So this is hell. (That has to be what Rey meant, about the  _ other realm _ .)   
  
Experimentally, Hux drags a foot across the ground beside him. Damn it. 

It leaves a streak of red, white topcoat skittered aside to reveal red crystal beneath. Crait. A phantom pain grips his left side, the throbbing ache of fresh bruises.    
  
So this  _ is _ hell.

He packs up the thought for later and scans the flat for Ren. Hux has turned nearly 180 degrees before he spots him, about a meter further away than he was the first time, still in the same position. 

Hux calls his name as he starts walking toward him, but Ren doesn’t acknowledge him. He would write it off as Ren meditating, given his pose, but as he approaches it becomes clear that isn’t the case. His gloved right hand is stretched out in front of him, tracing crimson patterns in the salt. From this angle, Hux can’t tell if it’s abstract arabesks or the alphabet--the wind picks up the salt as soon as he clears it away, blurring the edges of his handiwork.

“Ren,” Hux says again, as he gets closer. “Ren, I’m here.”

Ren doesn’t look up until Hux is nearly on top of him, the toe of his boot crossing into Ren’s drawing space. Ren’s head slowly pivots up, vertebrae by vertebrae as he tips his chin to study Hux’s face. His expression is uncannily impassive.

“Rey?” The voice is right, the face is right, the clothes are right, even the goddamn  _ doodling _ is right. But not this. This can’t be Ren. 

Surely he wouldn’t think Hux is Rey, just because it’s her who’s gotten him here.

“It’s me,” Hux says, emphasis making it clear he’s stating the obvious. “It’s Hux. Haven’t you been asking about me?”

“You aren’t Hux.” The absurdity of this, though. That’s Ren all over.

“Yes, I am. I came here to see you, why--”

“Hux isn’t dead.”

“No, I’m not dead,” Hux answers him slowly, shaken. This might be a longer conversation than he’d hoped, so he drops into a crouch beside Ren, to get on eye level.

Ren’s gaze follows him down, and he holds eye contact once Hux is down. There’s something frighteningly defeated in his gaze. Something bone-weary. “Hux could only be here if he were dead.” He turns back to the salt and adds a  _ nern _ to  _ Alderaan _ , legible now, from beside Ren. So he’s writing random words. Hux wonders if he’s registering what they mean. “So you can’t be him.”

Hux wants to touch him, wants nothing more than to wrap in his arms and assure him that it’s fine, or that at least they’ve found each other. But his arms feels stiff at his side, leaden, and he knows from experience that no amount of physical contact will do Ren any good, if he doesn’t want it.

“I am him,” Hux says, softer now. He decides it’s the salt in the air that’s making his eyes sting.

Ren doesn’t look up, just shakes his head. “I wish.” He draws a  _ herf  _ under the first  _ auresk  _ of Alderaan, a dismissal.

Hux could argue. He could grab Ren by the shoulders and yell in his face. Insult him, intersperse every vulgarity with  _ do-you-know-me-now? _ But this place leeches the energy out of him, leaving in its stead a bone-weariness that makes him sink to the ground beside Ren. 

_ Beside Ren.  _ After the memories, after thinking him permanently out of reach,  _ this _ is what matters. Maybe he’ll come around. Who cares if he doesn’t. The void in Hux’s mind has begun to swell with warmth.

He sits beside Ren in silence and crosses his legs. Their kneecaps nearly brush. His feet scrape the salt as he situates himself, but Ren doesn’t look up at the disturbance. 

Eyes stinging--only from the mineral--Hux puts his own finger in the salt. He traces a perfect grid of crimson dots in front of him, careful to avoid Ren’s script. When he’s covered all the salt within arm’s reach, he traces lines between the points, tidy geometric designs, constantly eroded by gusts of wind.

This isn’t how it was supposed to go. With Ren, it should have been a burst of emotion on both their parts - whether positive or negative is irrelevant. Instead there’s only this vacant quiet, and Ren, finally within reach again, yet incomprehensibly distant.

They sit in silence, while the wind hisses over the flats and whistles against the cliffs. Sloughs of displaced salt undo Hux’s work at a quicker and quicker rate, the longer he draws, until he’s too preoccupied with redrawing each freshly covered dot to manage any new lines or patterns.

White slowly fills his grid and the edges of his vision, obscuring Ren’s form beside him, until it’s risen in great swirling stacks that smart against his skin. 

There’s nothing but bright, blinding white - and then the salt fades, as well, dissolving into the stark walls of Private Conference Two.

Across the table, Rey is breathing hard, sweat plastering wild wisps of hair to her forehead. Her eyes remain closed for an odd, almost vulnerable moment, while Hux catches his own breath.

As soon as she’s partially recovered, he lays into her:

"What-” Fuck, his voice is less steady than he thought. He clenches a fist. “-what is that place?"  _ Why didn’t he know me?  _ sticks in the back of his throat.   
  
Rey leans back in her seat. "It's called Chaos."   
  
"So you mentioned before. What is it?"   
  
Rey inhales, gathering her ragged breath. "It's a... sort of region of the Netherworld of the Force. That's where the essence of all Force users--I think some cultures call it a soul--lives on after their body dies.” She seems to gain energy as she explains, leaning forward again to trace an invisible loop on the surface of the table. 

“Within the Netherworld there's the larger part, the Netherworld proper, if you like.” She taps where the circle’s center would be. “It's where those who drew their power from the Light, from unity with the world around them, experience ultimate oneness with the Light - and the Force - and reality itself.”

Hux raises his eyebrows, can retort with nothing more biting than a skeptical  _ hmm.  _ He was just there. In the goddamn  _ Netherworld _ , which is apparently the afterlife and not just a trashy strip club on Nar Shaddaa. 

He was there. In hell. Or at least some part of his consciousness was. The only stronger empirical argument for the Force he’s seen was his one-time bruises.

Rey goes on. “My books say it’s supremely peaceful, and completely unlike any sensation in life. The highest levels of meditation are supposed to be a mere shadow of it."   
  
"But that isn't where Ren is." There was nothing peaceful about it, nothing fulfilling.    
  
"No." Rey purses her lips, traces a jagged boundary near the edge of her invisible map. "Within the Netherworld, they say there's a smaller region called Chaos. That part is reserved for users of the dark side of the Force."   
  
Hux should really be rolling his eyes about now, but instead something cold drops into the pit of his stomach. "And they're what,” he says, as blithely as possible, “getting punished for their misdeeds in life?"   
  
"Not exactly,” Rey says, looking at her hands. “I mean, sort of. Not directly."   
  
"Alright?" He doesn’t have the patience for this.  
  
"It's not a punishment--the Force isn't a god or judge. So in the Netherworld, it's more like... an ultimate manifestation of the disciplines you observed in life. Where light side users draw their power from outside themselves in life, the dark side takes it from within."   
  
"Right, tapping into strong emotion." Hux has heard this much before.   
  
"Revolving around the self," Rey corrects. "So after you die, if you're a light-side user, your essence experiences the culmination of the unity you sought in life, once you're uninhibited by the body.”

“And what about the dark side?” Hux’s voice rings timid in his own ears.

“Again,” Rey replies, “without any distractions to impede you, you experience ultimate individuality. Or ultimate aloneness."   
  
"Oh." Hux is suddenly freezing cold. The blood is draining from his head again, and Rey’s face is a collage of fair complexion and black fuzz.  _ Fuck _ . Of course utter isolation would be Ren’s hell, of course it would, of course. He blinks, trying to focus on Rey’s reply.   
  
"So we all get what we work for, in the end.,” she says, somehow melancholy where Hux himself would be gloating in her position.   
  
Hux’s stomach is twisting in on itself. He hates everything about this, but not so much he wishes he didn’t know it. It’s always better to know. 

"I- I don't think Ren realizes- realized that-- that he was working for that,,” he stammers, fumbling to keep the conversation afloat. (To keep his own head above water).   
  
Rey’s voice takes on a distance, but loses none of its gravity. "The Jedi scholars called that the lie of the Darkness."   
  
"Someone should have told him."   
  
"I got my books from his uncle," Rey says. "I imagine someone did."   
  
Hux pops his lips, and they sit in silence for a moment, until Hux can't stand it any longer.   
  
"So why did it look like that?” he asks, and very nearly regrets it. “Why was it..like being in his memories?"   
  
"Why was it Crait?" Rey prompts.   
  
"Yes."   
  
"I suppose that's the point of Chaos,” she explains. She seems more comfortable with this question, more confident. She’s something of a Jedi scholar herself, after all. “It's all individualized experience, so there's no common landscape. No fixed reality."   
  
"I see," Hux replies, with carefully dangling inflection that suggests he doesn't quite.   
  
Rey clears her throat, stares at her fingers, now hovering just above Hux's wrists. "They theorized that Chaos would be lived - would manifest as moments or experiences or locations in which...you were most alone, most lonely, even, in life."   
  
"So Crait was it." There's heat in Hux's tone, and he can't help it.   
  
"I don't know," says Rey.    
  
Hux registers the sound of her voice, but the meaning glances off of him. "Crait was it. Crait was it, when I was right  _ fucking _ there the whole time." His fists clench instinctively, nails brand crescents into his palms. "Damn him. He was being so awful, so terrifying, the whole time, I couldn't have known."   
  
"I don't think it's your fault, Armitage."   
  
"It isn't my fault. He deserves it," Hux says. His eyes sting dangerously, and he bites his lip to still the sudden tremble there. "I just... I wish I'd known."   
  
“I’m sorry,” Rey offers, and immediately bites her lip. She must realize how much she’s been saying that. To Hux, of all people. 

Hux gives her a moment to wallow in it (and collects the shards of his own thoughts). “So is that why he didn’t know me?” he asks. “Because I’m the arsehole who apparently made him so lonely there the first time?”

“I doubt it,” Rey says, composed again. “It was probably because you were there through my presence. He couldn’t sense you. Not  _ as you _ , anyway.”

“But he could see me. He could hear my voice.”

“Those aren’t the senses in play there, not for him.” Rey shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have shown you it.”

“But you did.” Hux lowers his voice. “Are you able to do so again?”

“Will you continue to cooperate if I say ‘no’?”

Hux smiles thinly. “Then I suppose we’ll add another condition to our deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, here's a link to the Wookieepedia article on [Chaos, aka Hell](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Chaos). (Sidenote: Isn't the name just the best/worst coincidence?! I love Star Wars.) You'll see I've taken (and will take) some thematic license and liberties, but feel free to nerd out with and/or fact-check me :)


	8. Down the Dark Path

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, chapter-specific content warnings are in the endnotes!

The next week passes in a blur of shitty rations, shittier novels, and pages 28 through 49 of his flimsipad. Rey doesn’t come back - Hux must have scared her off once he caught her lying. He’d be less disappointed if she weren’t his one hope of contact with Ren, or at least--eventually--of permanent escape.

In her and the Force’s absence, the whole Chaos fiasco feels more and more dreamlike, and Hux starts to wonder if it wasn’t, if everything with Rey is merely the fabrication of his mind, a complex delusion as a prelude to his latest wet dream. One more unlovely, unfinished story.

But the guards come for him eventually, and reality washes back over him, as absurd as it is.

If he plays this right, he’ll see Ren today. Never mind that Ren won’t know him--he’ll feast on what scraps he can get.

 

* * *

 

“Show me him,” Hux tells Rey, fingers laced on the conference table.

“No.”

“No?” Hux echoes, and manages something halfway menacing. “I thought we had an arrangement.”

Rey has her hair in the topknot today, and she’s wearing white for a change. Something dark lingers in her gaze, though, persistent and unfathomable; she doesn’t break eye contact.

“I made a mistake,” she says. “That wasn’t something I should have told you about.”

“Well, you did,” Hux snaps back, tensing, more defensive than he wants to be. This shouldn’t feel like losing Ren all over again, not when he saw Ren for less than five minutes, and Ren didn’t even know him. Still, even that bit of contact felt rich compared to the famine he’s been in for months. “And you agreed that my future cooperation would be based on this, as well as prior conditions.”

“It was a _mistake_ , Armitage.” It feels like she’s making a point not to apologize.

Hux pops his lips, glances briefly at his newly unbound hands, ghastly under the chemical lighting. “Do you want my information or not?”

Rey sits quietly for a moment. To her credit,  she doesn’t lose her cool, just sighs, and doesn’t acquiesce (at least not as such). “Our deal is that you earn any contact you’d like to have. Reaching out like that demands a lot of energy, and it isn’t as useful as your memories. You’ll have to show me something before I can even try.”

Unfortunately, it’s fair. “Very well.” Hux puts on his most forbearing smile. “What would you like to see?”

Rey ponders this before responding, “Now that you know--about him and Chaos and our connection--do you have anything that would help with.. _.why_?”

“You’re going to have to be more specific.” It must be a universal phenomenon: all Force users assume the mindreading goes both ways.

“I mean, why he and I are still bound, after all this time. You do know that Snoke brought it about?”

“Yes.” Hux manages to give the word sharp edges. Maybe they’ll conceal the hot, envious thing wrapping around his ribcage.

“Neither of us wanted it in the first place, and now we’re apparently stuck together forever.”

Hux would give anything to be stuck to Ren forever. Rey doesn’t realize what she’s got. She doesn’t deserve it.

She goes on before he can even formulate a suitably caustic remark, much less swallow it down on instinct. Her voice has dropped an octave, and she leans in.

“And I’ve wondered if it...might have something to do with why he’s survived.”

“He hasn’t survived,” Hux points out, as didactically as possible.

“I mean, his...soul or essence, or whatever you want to call it, should have been absorbed into the Dark.”

There’s a chilling finality to that wording, though Hux doesn’t understand it. “You mean he ought to have been annihilated?”

“No, no, not like that,” Rey replies, comfortingly confident, then goes on: “No one really knows what happens to spirits that disappear into the Dark--they might just be so deep in Chaos no one can reach them, or maybe they aren’t even conscious.” She pauses, glancing briefly at the ceiling as if to gather her thoughts. “But their essence still exists in some form, even if they’re just part of the Force again. The Force can’t create anything or destroy it.”

Hux snorts. “Like thermodynamics.”

“I guess so,” Rey says. “You could consider death a phase change.”

“But you’re saying Ren hasn’t undergone it.”

Rey gives him a pensive frown. “Not entirely,” she says. “Which is strange because yeah, there are a few powerful Sith who also didn’t or haven’t, which Kylo is--not Sith, I mean, but powerful--but for most Dark Side users, the thing that sort of tethers them is a bond to something in the physical world. That’s why they can sometimes make contact with it.”

The pieces fall into place, and the jealous tendrils tighten around Hux’s chest. He could scream. He could positively _scream_ , but he doesn’t, just injects his reply with an immutable dose of vitriol.

“And you think you’re _that_ ,” he says, “for him.”

Rey can’t have missed Hux’s disgust, but she appears nonplussed. “I don’t know if I am. I was hoping you’d have something that could help me find out.”

Fortunately, what Hux has is proof-negative.

“Alright.” He unfolds his fingers to stretch his left hand toward Rey.

So what if this is self-indulgent and vindictive--it answers her question.

Rey curls her fingers around Hux’s wrist, as if taking his pulse. He shuts his eyes and pulls an argument out of the darkness there.

.

 

.

The war room has cleared after a High Command meeting on retaining the Outer Rim territories.

It’s going to involve more permanent planetside deployments, of Troopers, officers, even pilots. It’s the only way to maintain consistent control: the moment the Order lifts its thumb, insurgency will spring up to fill its place.

They’ve seen the pattern throughout the Core, Inner, and Mid Rims, spreading outward with the influence of the Resistance. While almost every rebellion is publicly spearheaded by locals, all assessments suggest Resistance incitement. They latch onto the grievances of planetary minorities, arm the dissenters, and let numbers win the battles.

The extra deployments are a dry Bacta strip, a temporary fix. The central Resistance remains their primary target.

_Decapitation_ came up in the meeting: surgical efforts—assassination ops—against Resistance leadership. These will stem the tide of revolution and strip the backing from the puppet governments being stood up.

The only person who stands a chance against the two Force users heading the Resistance stands across the room. His back is to Hux, his face to the floor-to-ceiling viewport, his silhouette blotting out the stars.

Hux lingers behind him, poking at his datapad, unsure what to say to him, unwilling to leave him. Fortunately, Ren speaks first.

“It’s on me.” He doesn’t turn around.  “Finishing this.” For once he’s admitting it.

“Yes,” Hux says, and powers off his datapad, scoffing. “There’s only so much we mere mortals can do.”

Ren doesn’t laugh. Stays facing the stars, so Hux can’t tell if he so much as smiles. His voice is flat, low, controlled. “I just keep waiting on the opportunity.”

That isn’t good enough. Pre-meditation has never been Ren’s style, but he’s about to have to learn it.

Hux pockets his datapad and takes the few steps to join Ren at the viewport. “And when exactly do you think this opportunity is going to present itself?” Hux risks a glance at Ren. His teeth are scraping his lower lip. “You already missed one chance with Organa, before Crait.”

“I won’t miss it again,” Ren replies, too quickly.

“Can I be certain of that?”

Ren turns at that, all but whirling to face Hux, then leaning into his space. “I’m ready,” he says, like it’s a dare.

Hux resists the urge to fidget, clasps his hands behind his back. All business, though Ren’s lips are centimeters from his own. “And what about the Jedi?”

Ren says nothing and retreats, turning back toward the viewport. And Hux has lost him.

The hum of the cooling unit fills the silence. The white streak of a passing ship appears and vanishes, kilometers away.

“Shouldn’t she be easier than Organa?” Hux prods.

“Should be.”

Impossible man.

“ _Will_ she be?”

“No,” Ren says, and turns again, bristling. His gaze bores into Hux, all black and stormy waters. “Maybe. It’s - complicated with Rey.”

_Rey._ They’re on a given-name basis; of course they fucking are. “Complicated how?” Hux snaps. “She is a terrorist and an enemy of the state. Our state.”

“It’s just that I’ve spent a lot of time in her head,” Ren says, loftily. “And there’s something left of. Snoke’s bond.”

“Oh,” Hux says, and can’t help the lilt of mockery in his tone, can’t help the pang of jealousy in his chest.  “So your souls are bound? Is that why you can’t seem to eliminate her?”

“No.” Ren’s eyes flash briefly, but he seems to reign himself in. “There’s just an intimacy there.”

“An _intimacy_?” Hux echoes, letting his voice go shrill. Of course Ren doesn’t mean what it sounds like, but Ren should choose his words more carefully: Hux will take any ammunition he can get.

“For fuck’s sake, Hux! I know her well, that’s all.” Ren’s right fist clenches, straining at the synthleather of his glove. “She’s powerful, almost as strong as I am.”

Hux gives him a thin and ugly smile. “Oh yes, you’re two of a kind. She flatly rejected your... _proposition_ \--” He falters, meaning _offer_ , but it’s too late: the connotation is there. He forges on. “So it’s quite telling that you still think she’d be an essential ally.”

“A useful tool,” Ren corrects.

“So you do want her.” Hux thins his lips, driving the dagger home. “Someone you can dominate, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Ren steps toward him, perilous. “Hux, you know it isn’t like that.”

Hux does know. He knows perfectly well Ren has none of the interest in Rey that he does in himself; none of the desire or attraction or _affection_.

He also knows there are more agreeable ways to convince Ren to set a date for the assassination. But it’ll be good for him to say it out loud. Hux wants to hear him, anyway (hear _I choose you, I choose_ you, _you’re mine_ ).

“Of course,” is what Hux says, caustic. “I should have known you can’t dominate her, she’s your kindred-spirit-soul-bonded Force-mate. In that case, I wish you both the best as co-emperors. Will I get a pension or just be executed?”

“Fucking hell, Hux!” Ren thunders. That did it. Hux half-expects the viewport to splinter. “You know I don’t - I never chose- She isn’t you, damn it!”

Ren whirls on him entirely. He raises a hand and shoves Hux against the transparisteel, hard enough to sting and leave him gasping. The Force curls around his wrists, a pair of leaden binders pinning him against the convex glass. His chest heaves, and his ribs sting. Ren leaves his hand low, holding Hux in place. Still without touching him, he leans in, nose-to-nose with Hux.

“I can’t _fucking_ believe you’re making this about sex,” he grits out.

Hux inhales painfully. Ren has no hold on his throat, but speaking won’t be easy with the wind knocked out of him. “It isn’t about sex,” he manages, stops to suck in air. “It’s about--”

“Loyalty?” Ren cuts him off, eyes darting around his face.

Hux coughs. “And where does yours lie?”

Ren’s lip curls, and he recoils briefly, as if going in for a blow. But then his posture slackens, and he leans back into Hux’s space, angling his face slightly downward. He still sounds pissed, but his breath is hot against Hux’s mouth, and his voice is low. “Don’t you know by now?”

Hux has no chance to respond before Ren’s crushed his lips against Hux’s, ravenous, sucking and biting. The Force evaporates from around Hux’s wrists, and it takes all his strength not to fall forward entirely, collapse into Ren’s arms despite everything, eyes falling shut. As it is, he clings to Ren’s neck with his left hand, tangles his right into his hair, tugging desperately as he parts his own lips, allowing Ren’s tongue entry.

Ren has one hand on Hux’s neck, obscenely big fingertips pressing gently; the other must be splayed on the transparisteel beside Hux. They aren’t quite exposed here, but it feels delightfully obscene all the same, devouring each other in front of the viewport. The conference room doors are locked, however, and the stars are their only audience.

Hux bites down at the thought. Ren makes a strangled sound deep in his throat, but doesn’t pull away. He’s searching out every corner of Hux’s mouth, devouring him at a fevered pace, and Hux returns it in kind, tasting him until they’re both breathless.

Hux pulls back enough to inhale, and Ren keeps his head tilted down. Hux drags his fingers all the way through Ren’s hair, scalp to ends. He shudders. Disarmed.

“So she’s nothing to you?” Hux murmurs.

“She’s nothing,” Ren says, voice strained, eyes deliciously bright.

“And you’ll kill her?”

Ren’s throat bobs, and Hux wants to sink his teeth into it. Bruise him and mark him. Heat’s pooling in his groin, and this is no longer about the Jedi. He can feel Ren’s hardness where they’re pressed together.

“If I get the chance,” Ren says.

Hux raises his left hand to stroke Ren’s cheek. Fuck, his fingers are trembling, and he _needs_. “Will you get the chance?” he manages, but it’s nothing more than foreplay. His objective has changed.

“I hope so.” Ren’s hand slides from the transparisteel to Hux’s hip.

It isn’t good enough, but Ren’s fingers fit so well around Hux’s side. He’s kneading the softness there. Hux closes the narrow gap between their mouths.

.

 

.

Somehow, he manages to stop himself there, blinking back to Chandrila to meet Rey’s gaze. He doesn’t gloat, lets the harshness of it speak for itself.

“It didn’t work,” Rey says, steady, and apparently unaffected, “whatever you were trying to get him to do. Just because he didn’t--or doesn’t-- _like_ our bond doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”

Heat prickles Hux’s face, and he hopes he isn’t coloring too deeply. “He told me what was left wasn’t a bond at all.”

“But he knew it was _something_ ,” Rey counters, “and that it was stronger than Snoke ever intended it.”

“But it wasn’t so strong he left the Order.” _And me._

As soon as it’s out of his mouth, the counterargument is embarrassingly transparent: Ren hadn’t followed through on making an opportunity to off Rey. Hux assumes he tried, but has no idea how hard.

But Rey just sigh and, looks down. “We aren’t fighting over him, Armitage.”

“I know,” Hux lies.

“Good.” Rey glances down, loops her fingertip across the table like she does when she’s thinking. “Thank you for that,” she says at last, apparently done arguing. “Every bit of insight helps.”

That’s all Hux needs. “So now you’ll show me him.”

Rey purses her lips, then looks back up at Hux. There’s something almost melancholy in her gaze, as if he’s a student who’s missed the main point of her lesson, whatever it might have been. “I can’t guarantee--” she starts.

“Try,” Hux says. “You agreed to that much.”

“I did.” Rey reaches back across the table, wraps her hand around his forearm this time. She closes her eyes first, then Hux follows suit.

The cold and quiet of the meeting room falls over them, until the buzz of the cooling unit fills Hux’s ears, throbbing in his brain. It rattles axons, recarves neural pathways. It swells and evens out into a single, plucked note, deep and low and unfading.

It’s dark here, until it isn’t, until the void resolves into shifting shadows and a red haze.

.

 

.

The red haze is no trick of the transition from reality (as Hux knows it, anyway) to Chaos. Columns of ruddy sand swirl in the air around Hux, caught in a harsh, dry wind. He blinks and attempts to gather himself. The sand eddies on and off of the black rubber of his shoes with each gust, and he shifts his weight as he looks up, shielding his eyes against the onslaught.

Unlike with the last vision - visitation - _whatever_ \- the terrain is utterly unfamiliar. Hux takes in the steep sides of a jagged gorge, cloven from rock the same rust color as the sand in the air and on the ground.

Nestled into the arms of the canyon, on either side, are rows of stark, black single-level buildings, each hardly bigger than a utility closet. They throw long shadows under a brownish sky, dark whether with night, clouds, or an unusual atmosphere, Hux has no idea. Sand collects on the structures’ elaborately carved gables and columns, coats the rails of cast-iron fences surrounding them.

There’s no sign of Ren, nor any other organic life form. Hux has half a mind to call his name, but it’ll probably be useless.

Moreover, he can’t stand the thought of shouting it, of the shrill, desperate sound of his voice echoing off the gorge’s narrow sides, of _Ren_ reverberating through the empty landscape, falling back on his ears with no response.

He shuts his eyes, inhales as deeply as possible without sucking down a nose full of sand. Ren has to be here. He has to. Rey’s only able to take him here through her connection with Ren - she wouldn’t send him to some random, empty corner of Chaos. She quite literally cannot.

Okay. _Concentrate_.

Hux keeps his eyes closed, latches onto the lingering tinnitus of the sharp chord of _Ren_ in the Force. It swells as he focuses on it, lets it permeate his consciousness until he hardly feels the sand smarting his face, or the hot blasts of wind on his skin, tugging at his loose prison grays.

He probes it for a direction, for a clue, for some sort of message. It materializes in a single point inside his skull, less a pain than a prod, like a string pulling at his left temple. He can almost see it, silver in the darkness behind his eyelids. _Him_.

Eyes still shut, Hux orients his head in the right direction, perfectly angled to match the shimmering line, then opens his eyes. He’s facing the tallest of the structures nearby, the second edifice on his left. As he walks toward it, the intricacies of its design come into focus.

Like those around it, the oblong building is surrounded by a cast metal fence, interrupted by a low gate. A single wrought black flower curves around the first post of the gate, and Hux reaches around it to lift the latch and push the gate inward and open. It creaks on its hinges, loud even amid the screeching of the gale.

Hux purses his lips before stepping inside, then lets the gate swing shut after him with a clang.

With the first step inside the structure’s bounds, his heart settles somewhere around his diaphragm, and his stomach knots as he realizes: the building is--just like all of the low, narrow, silent, dark structures in this whole valley--a crypt.

Upon closer examination, it’s unmistakable. As Hux crosses the small courtyard between the gate and the structure’s stone door, he makes out skull-like effigies on the tomb’s buttresses. He recognizes the shapes of the flowers too, though they’re dead and black, carved into the structure’s obsidian exterior: the pointed petals of rominarians, the sloping cups of sapflowers, millas with their long stems.

He woke up to them once, to their vibrant colors and cloying scents, curled around Ren. They’re one of the few things he remembers--besides the killer hangover they heralded--about _Naboo_.

They make no sense here.

This isn’t the place where someone from such a soft world would want to be buried. It isn’t the sort of place any rational being would want to be buried.

But perhaps the flowers are a trick of Chaos; perhaps this place has no equivalent in reality. (Perhaps this is all a nightmare, and Hux is about to wake up in Ren’s arms.)

He blinks, shakes his head, and doesn’t let his mind wander. Pausing before the tomb’s door, he studies the carven skulls again. They’re all wrong, and not just because of the red sand gathered in their crevices: the mandible is too rectangular, the eyes set too close together, the crown of the head too smooth, and _fuck_.

They aren’t skulls at all.

Ren had red sand clinging to his robes years ago, when he returned with the mask. Returned with Vader’s mask from Moraband, and the Sith tombs there. Here.

Hux hasn’t been to this world, but perhaps he should have recognized it.

Of course Ren’s aloneness would manifest here. At least this time Hux knows to do something about it. Scuffing sand off his shoes on the structure’s narrow slab of threshold, he splays his fingers against the door and pushes it open.

It opens silently, with an uncanny smoothness. Hux ducks his head to enter, but can stand up again once inside. He blinks, adjusting to the dim shadows thrown by glowing red crystals mounted to the walls. The air is cool and smells musty, cavelike, as if the tomb were located in a dimension more distant than Chaos, millennia ago, kilometers underground.

As to be expected from the tomb of a man cremated on another world entirely, the dais dominating the center of the crypt stands empty. The acolytes Ren had said scavenged the mask seem not to have delivered any other piece of the armor. The chamber is entirely unadorned, but for the crystals on the walls.

It takes a few moments for Hux to pick out Ren from the shadows in the far left corner of the tomb. Hux doesn’t catch the glint of Ren’s own mask, but he’s got the cowl up, ungloved fingers toying idly with its fraying ends.

“Ren?” Pitiful as Hux’s voice sounds, it still echoes a bit in the stillness of the crypt.

The cowl angles upward, and all that’s visible in the gloom is the tip of Ren’s nose. “Get out.”

“‘ _Get out_ ’?” Hux parrots, stung. He masks the hurt with mocking incredulity. (Or attempts to, at least.)

“Go,” Ren says again, and Hux can’t tell if the tremor in his voice is perilous or pathetic. “I’ve seen enough ghosts.”

Either Chaos scrambles Ren’s mind whenever it changes appearances--and it must change, since this isn’t Crait--or he’s had some unexplained shift in opinion about Hux’s survival status. It’s also entirely possible he means a different kind of ghost--a memory, not a spirit. That thought aches most of all.

But regardless, there’s no use having this argument again.

“I’m sorry.” Hux rounds the dais to loom into the far left corner. “But I’m here, and I plan to stay.”

Apropos of nothing, Ren laughs, low and brief and mirthless. The cowl dips again. “It even fucking sounds like him.”

“That’s because it is--” Hux stops short, corrects himself. At least Ren hasn’t called him _Rey_ yet. “Rather, I _am_ \--”

“You aren’t.”

Hux won’t have this, snapping _are not_ , _am too_ , like a couple of children. Instead he stands over Ren in silence, watching. Ren’s fingers return briefly to the loose threads of his cowl, but he falters after a moment, cranes his neck far enough upward to meet Hux’s eyes. The cowl slides back, though not entirely off. His eyes are red-rimmed, and his scar looks pink and fresh. In the dimess, his moles look black.

“If you’re going to be here,” he says slowly, “you could help.”

For once, Hux’s mouth is lightyears ahead of his brain. “Anything, Ren.” (It falls out before he can temper it.)

Ren laughs again, that sad, dark sound, like a lame aftershock to a devastating groundquake. Hux doesn’t need Ren’s abilities to all but hear him thinking, _No, I take it back. Doesn’t sound that much like Hux at all._ Ren stands, then meets Hux’s eyes again once they’re standing chest to chest.

“What am I helping with?” Hux prompts, when he seems to need it.

“I need to find it.”

Hux thins his lips, drums up his patience. “Find _what_? The mask?”

“Yes,” Ren says. He looks down, around, seemingly past Hux, and provides no further guidance.

“This is a tiny chamber, Ren,” Hux says, slow and gentle, like he’s addressing a particularly young recruit. “Surely you’ve searched the whole thing. Besides,” he adds, “can’t you _sense_ whether it’s here?”

“ _No_.” It comes out harshly, but Ren’s lips are trembling. They work soundlessly for a second before he clenches his jaw.

“So it must not be here,” Hux supplies.

“That isn’t it,” Ren grits out.

“Then what is?”

“I can’t. I can’t sense **_anything_** , damn it!” Ren’s voice reverbs off the stone walls, deafening. His hands are at his sides, clenching and unclenching into nervous fists.

On instinct, Hux takes a step backward. “You mean to tell me that here, in the Netherworld of the Force, the Force is not--”

“Everything is the Force. It all feels the same.”

There would have been a time Hux would have laughed a bit, mock-gloated: _Tell me, Lord Ren, how does it feel to be a mere mortal?_ But Ren looks so damn pitiful, Hux closes the distance between them again, reaches toward him.

“Ren--” he starts, and means to reach under the cowl to caress the scar.

But Ren ducks away, around him. “You can fuck off if you aren’t going to help.”

Hux sighs, pivots to stare after Ren. He canvasses the chamber meticulously, robes centimeters above the glossy black floor. He looks like a caged bird with them swirling around him, like the immovable walls have stunted his wingspan.

At a loss, Hux follows him, peering after him into every dark corner and bare alcove, rubber soles crunching on a fine layer of sand. Ren remains taciturn for the duration of the search, and Hux can think of nothing to fill the silence. It isn’t as if they can talk, when Ren won’t even acknowledge that Hux is real.

When they’ve reached the far left corner again, Ren looks Hux up and down. “I need to try somewhere else,” he says. “Not in here.”

Decent of him to initiate conversation.

“You mean out in the valley?” Hux asks, nodding toward the open door. “Why would it be out there?” Unless it was, the first time.

“That isn’t what I mean.” He shakes his head and, inexplicably, starts the circuit of the tomb again. “I have to get out of here.”

“The door’s about two meters to your right.”

“That isn’t what I mean,” Ren repeats, without looking up.

Hux doesn’t answer, and doesn’t follow him again. Just watches him, and clasps his hands behind his back. How many other times has Ren done this? What other ghosts has he asked to join him? They’ve probably all been figments of his imagination.

This is pointless and idiotic, and it’s equally pointless and idiotic to tell him so. His best and worst quality has always been how difficult he is to dissuade. Hux might as well get comfortable.

He takes a few strides to the center of the chamber, then brings his hands to his sides to brace them against the dais.

“Ren,” he says, as he swings himself up, letting his feet dangle, “hope you won’t mind if I--”

Ren, who’s searching the alcove at the head of the dais, whirls around, a dark hurricane of spinning robes. He heads toward Hux’s spot. “Get down,” he says, now unmistakably dangerous. “Right now.”

Of course he’d treat this as blasphemy, but at least it’s taken his mind off the mask.

“What for?” Hux counters. “There’s nowhere else to sit.”

Ren’s standing in front of him now. “I _said_ , get off.”

If Ren can’t sense the Force, it’s unlikely he can use it. Hux can challenge him all day, risk-free.

“And if I don’t?”

“Get the fuck dow--” Ren starts, reaching for Hux as if to pull him down himself. For a split second, Hux’s pulse accelerates, but as Ren’s hand brushes his arm, the tomb evaporates around him.

.

 

.

What’s left is the white of Private Conference Two, and Rey’s pensive face across the table. Hux’s hands shake uncontrollably in the space between the two of them. She’s breathing hard, slim hand lying limp on the table next to Hux’s, palm up.

It takes her a moment to summon her voice and sit upright again, but once she does, she’s right back to business.

“That could be another angle,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “Vader and the Sith, plenty of bonds there.”

Hux’s breathing is still irregular, but he manages a reply. “You think that could explain how he’s still...conscious?”

“I don’t know, but the mask is...an interesting artifact, anyway.” Rey holds Hux’s gaze for a moment. “Was that place where he found it?”

Hux clasps his fingers to still them, clinging until the knuckles go white. He manages to nod. “I believe so.”

“And that was a tomb for Vader?” Rey asks. “There on--I believe my books call it Moraband or Korriban?”

“I suppose so,” Hux offers. Since when is he the room’s expert on Sith worlds? “Ren never gave much detail about what he did there.”

Rey’s lit up, all implacable curiosity. “Tomorrow,” she says, leaning forward. “Could you show me whatever he did give?”

Hux sighs.  “I suppose I can.”

 

* * *

 

It’s less an ugly memory than a powerful and vaguely terrifying one--the closest Hux has come to raw exposure to the Force itself, with the possible exception of the chord in his brain.

The next morning Hux tries to explain this, but Rey dismisses him, covers his hand with her own, and says, “Let’s try.”

.

 

.

Hux awakens to the beep of a cardio monitor, startled from an uneasy sleep into the glaring lights and antiseptic scent of a medbay room. His stomach swoops with the panic of _how-did-I-get-here_ , but as his vision adjusts to the glare of the fluorescents, it comes back to him.

Ren. The solo mission. The delay. _General, Commander Ren has returned and been transported to medbay._

“You’re here.” From the bed beside Hux, Ren’s voice is rough with disuse.

He’s perfectly still and looking at Hux with a soft vulnerability, as if he turned his face upon waking up himself and has been studying Hux for hours, left cheek on the pillow.

On the other side of the bed, a monitor shows Ren’s much improved vitals, the now-steady oscillations of his heartbeat, beeping at intervals. An intravenous needle juts out of the crook of his right arm, just below the sleeve of the gray medbay shift, attached to a bag of clear sodium solution. The room reeks of bacta, though the only patch in sight is a small one on Ren’s neck--the others, as Hux learned from med droid FX-17 last night, are on his feet and ankles, covered by the sheet.

“Of course I’m here,” Hux says. On impulse, he reaches for Ren’s hand and runs his thumb over the knuckles, avoiding the currently disconnected port below them, and the bands of tape adhering it to his skin. He looks up and clears his throat, professionalizing. “I need to debrief you on what took so long.”

Hux had come as soon as word hit the bridge, walking out two hours into gamma shift. He’s been working doubles for the past three and a half weeks--with Ren planetside, his leisure time is too lonely to enjoy, and missing Ren means worrying about him. Hux prefers distraction.

Both Ren and Snoke had told him to expect no updates; neither had given him more than coordinates to describe the planet or Ren’s task there. Snoke had said _classified_ ; Ren had said _for my training_ , and kissed Hux too breathless to inquire further. Later research revealed only the planet’s name--Moraband, formerly Korriban--and the Sith legends apparently set there.

Out of his depth, Hux had done what he could: offered Ren a squadron of troopers for tactical support. Ren refused, insisting it wasn’t ‘ _that kind of battle’_ , that this had to be done alone. Hux wasn’t informed enough to argue.

Now, two weeks too late, with Ren barely intact, he wishes he he’d tried.

“What do you mean?” Ren’s brows knit together, and he sits up straighter, taking his head off the pillow. “It was a two-week mission.”

“Yes, it was supposed to be,” Hux says, annoyed that he’s already annoyed. Can’t he enjoy Ren’s company for one fucking minute before having to put up with this? “What happened?”

“‘What happened?’” Ren echoes. “I took two weeks. What’s the problem?”

The temperature in the room seems to drop several degrees. Hux purses his lips, and tries to affect forbearance, not fear. “You-- you took four weeks, Ren.”

“I did?”

“Yes.” Hux finds himself involuntarily caressing Ren’s fingers, palpating them one by one, compulsive, fidgeting. “How did you lose track of time?”

“I don’t know,” Ren says, voice suddenly tremulous. “I mean, I didn’t bring any tech outside my ship. And I guess flying back I was too out of it to look at the chronos, I…” He trails off, and Hux glances up. He’s gnawing his lip. “It didn’t matter there.”

“It didn’t matter?” Hux stills his hand on top of Ren’s, pressing Ren’s into the mattress. “Keeping to the established schedule didn’t matter? Just like feeding and hydrating yourself, apparently?” Hux gestures to the rest of Ren, the monitor and IV tap, with his free left hand.

“It was part of the trial, Hux,” Ren retorts, slightly heated, but still thick with building emotion. “I just. Took longer than I should have.”

“Then you should have commed for a resupply, not done…” Hux gestures again, helplessly. “...this.”

“I couldn’t have stopped,” Ren says, looking down at his left hand under Hux’s. He runs his right through his hair, brushing a stray lock out of his face. “Once I started, I had to keep going. And the Force sustained me.”

“No, it didn’t.”

“I survived,” Ren shoots back.

Hux just scoffs.

“And I succeeded, too,” Ren continues, once Hux’s silence has spoken for itself.

Hux affects a sigh, masking his curiosity. “And may I ask what constitutes success?” he asks, blase.

“I found what I was looking for.” Ren looks at the ceiling, straight at the bright lampdisk, cryptic as ever.

“Which was?” Hux prompts.

“It’s still on my shuttle,” Ren says, without looking at him. “It’s easier seen than explained. And I shouldn’t have left it unattended.”

“Very well,” Hux says, rather than repeating the question. “I’ll send a unit to take it to Acquisitions.” All alien artifacts brought onto an Order vessel undergo a period of sanitization, quarantine, and cataloguing. “I suppose they can show me in the lab.”

“No!” Ren’s eyes widen, and his breath hitches. “You’re not letting the staff handle it.”

“It’s protocol, Ren.”

“I don’t give a shit about protocol,” Ren says, suddenly vehement. “No one else touches it.”

Hux raises his eyebrows. “But I do? When it’s probably contaminated with xeno bacteria?”

“It isn’t.” Ren’s recovered himself, turned pleading. “Just bring it to me. Please.”

The nerve of him, with those dark, wet eyes. Hux scoffs again. “I’m not your errand boy, Ren.”

“No,” Ren says. “But I don’t trust anyone else with it.”

It’s a sad statement, of course, that Armitage Hux would be the only person _anyone_ \--much less someone as broken and strong and gorgeous and sad as Ren--considers trustworthy. But the vulnerability in the words, the need there, latches onto something in Hux’s chest. He acquiesces, and heads for the hangar.

Once there, he locates the Upsilon-class Ren commandeered for the mission and scans his code cylinder for entry. The gangway hisses open, echoing in the early morning quiet of the cavernous room. He boards, and finds his way through the cargo hold into the cockpit, where an unassuming duraluminum crate rests in the copilot’s floorboard.

He stoops to pick it up, and finds it surprisingly light. It’s a perfect cube, tarnished black at the corners, each edge just slightly shorter than his forearm. He tucks it under his arm and disembarks, closing the ramp and doors behind him.

The relatively new general’s stripes on Hux’s uniform hold back both stares and queries as he returns to medbay, rotating the crate from one side to another as the corners dig into his waist.

A triage droid accosts him as he re-enters the sanitized wing, alerting him that foreign objects must be scanned prior to exposure to patients, but he dismisses it. ( _“Thank you, Effex, but that won’t be necessary.”_ )

Hux keys his way into Ren’s private room, to be greeted with a twitch of Ren’s lips unambiguous enough to be called a smile. Ren thanks him.

“Not at all,” Hux says, and makes his way back to the left side of the bed, standing between the chair he occupied overnight and Ren’s bedside. He holds up the crate.  “Where shall I…?”

“Give it to me.” Ren reaches for it, and sets it gingerly on the sheet still covering his lap. Hux makes to resume his prior position, but before he can sit, Ren pats the bed. “Closer. I want you to see it.”

“I can see it perfectly well from over here, thank you.”

“I swear it’s clean.” Ren taps the mattress again, then lifts both the IV tube and the cords connecting the electrodes on his chest to the monitor to scoot to his right, clearing room for Hux.

Hux shucks his greatcoat before acquiescing. The thin mattress dips as he settles onto it, facing Ren. He folds his legs underneath him, but intentionally lets his feet dangle off the edge. He’ll do that much for FX-17’s sterility standards.

Ren presses his thumb to the crate’s biosensor, and it springs open, top half falling back on its hinge with a hiss. Ren straightens again, inhales sharply before reaching into the crate with both hands to extract the object.

“Set that aside,” he orders Hux, nodding to the empty crate. Hux does so gingerly, placing it behind him, beside Ren’s calf, then returns his attention to the decidedly _un_ sanitary thing Ren’s cradling on his lap.

“Here it is,” he says, with a warrior’s pride and a sort of boyish wonder all at once. He holds it up, turning it toward Hux for examination.

The artifact is objectively hideous, vaguely spherical, scorched-gray metal that must have once been black. It’s twisted and deformed around the edges, covered in the rents and rills of partial melting and possibly exposure. Nonetheless, two symmetrical holes peer out of it like empty skull-sockets. Below them lie the tortured lines of a mouth-grill, certainly meant to cover a respirator.

Despite the damage, Hux can’t help but recognize it. “Is this--” he starts, once he’s processed it. “This is Darth Vader’s.”

“My grandfather’s,” Ren corrects, that pride lingering in his tone.

Hux knows this, but the fact takes on fresh meaning with the withered helmet between Ren’s hands, with the gleam in his eye as he admires it, like he’s been handed every star outside.

Hux frowns. “What’s it for?”

“'What’s it--'” Ren echoes, laughing, but stops himself short once he realizes Hux hasn’t joined in. That Hux means the question. “It’s going to bring me closer to him. I can experience his memories, feel his connection to the Darkness. Possibly commune with him.”

If Hux hadn’t seen Ren in action--stopping blaster bolts in battle, extracting answers in interrogations with a flick of his wrist--he would call for the psytechs, but he has enough empirical evidence not to dismiss Ren outright. Still, he’s wary.

“And that will help with your training,” he says, without inflection, not daring to make it a question.

Ren studies him for a moment before responding. “You don’t think so,” he says. “You think I’ve lost my mind.”

“No, I don’t,” Hux retorts. He shouldn’t be this defensive when Ren’s mostly right, but he’d like at least some credit for not speaking his mind. “I mean, not exactly. Just because I don’t entirely understand it doesn’t mean--”

Ren cuts him off. “Here.” He reaches his taped-up left hand to take Hux’s right, lifting it off his lap. “Want to feel it?”

“Ren, I’m not sure I can.”

“Do you want to _try_?” Ren quirks an eyebrow, knowing. “You’re curious.”

Hux rubs the back of his neck with his left hand, but doesn’t move his right from under Ren’s. “I suppose, but--”

“Here,” Ren repeats, and pulls Hux’s hand toward the shriveled mask. He presses Hux’s hand to it, firm but gentle, warm and comforting on the backs of his fingers, where the rippled metal digs into his palm.

“Close your eyes,” Ren says, before Hux can ask what the hell is supposed to be happening. Against his better judgment, Hux complies.

Behind his eyelids, the room dissolves into black, then a flash of orange, volcanic heat rushing over him, creeping along his skin, seeping into his veins like a current of fire.

It hurts unbearably, like he’s burning from the inside out--bones blackening, muscle charring, veins bursting, skin melting. He isn’t sure if it’s he who screams or the voice in his head. If they’re one and the same.

The voice grows shriller as that image fades, morphing into an unmistakably feminine tone. It doesn’t stop as the darkness congeals into corpses--human and alien, every age, and several genders. They’re covered in sand and sweat, blood and scorch-marks.

The scream doesn’t stop. A woman appears, flat on her back, lips parted, doused in sweat. It might be her scream; it might be Hux’s. His chest aches; his head pounds; he can’t open his eyes.

Another image: the unmistakable silhouette of a young child, but cast in gold, shot through with bands of darkness. A red beam approaches it, buzzing, thrumming--it looks like Ren’s but steadier, intent. No crackle, no spark. No crossguard, either--it requires no flair. It touches the silhouette, but the image dissolves as soon as it’s touched.

The side of the saber gets closer and closer still, till it dominates the blackness, bright and indomitable, blinding red.

The scream hasn’t stopped, but Hux recognizes it now, can feel the pressure of a hand on the back of his own, slipping under, prying it away from the metal; another on his shoulder, shaking gently.

A second voice, Ren’s, hushing him. “You’re okay, baby.” So distraught his accent’s emerging. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t think-- Come here, baby. Breathe. I’m sorry, I’m sorry--”

Ren’s pulling him close now. Hux can feel his arms around him; he buries his face in the thin, sterile fabric of the medbay shift.

But he should have opened his eyes by now. (That’s what happened, anyway.)

“Ren?” he says, into the darkness that’s left. He said the same then, but he’s separated himself from the memory. The warm solidity of Ren’s arms fades, with it the mattress under him, the chirp of the cardio monitor.

The memory fizzles out prematurely, likely a faulty transmission, and the dark takes over. He should be returning to Chandrila any second now. He’s dimly aware of Rey’s hand on his, warm and steady, though nothing else about reality materializes.

Then it’s the awful prickling sensation inside his skull. It’s a tightness and a stinging, as if a pinhead point in the middle of his brain were being pinched through the eye of a needle.

It’s alleviated as an unfamiliar landscape crystallizes before his eyes, first blurry figures, resolving into sharp edges, like coming up from underwater. The blurs this time are black, red, orange.  
  
_Chaos_. Rey didn’t warn him. Given the strength of what he just remembered, it may not be her doing at all.

Focus.  
  
Hux blinks, catching his balance but not his breath--smoke hangs in the air. This isn’t Moraband.

He’s in the middle of some kind of compound, fenced in. An impressive blaze engulfs a large domed structure that’s clearly the compound’s centerpiece. The other buildings look like log huts, vaguely hive-shaped. Nearly all of them are destroyed, burnt out or still in flames.  
  
No one is visible, and there’s no sound but the crackle of the fire. However, one of the huts appears entirely unharmed. The needle-strung point in his brain pinches for an instant as he turns toward it.

Hux threads a path around ash and debris, over rills in freshly burned ground, to the entrance of the dwelling. Smoke is low in the air, and were the distance any greater, he’d tug the neckline of his uniform up over his mouth and nose. As it is, however, he reaches the hut’s entrance--a wooden door loose on its hinges--after a mere few meters of walking.

The pinching in his skull has dissipated--no more tension now that he’s this close to Ren, or whatever shade of him is on the other side of the door.

Hux bites his lip, shuts his eyes briefly, then splays a hand across the door and pushes it inward. He steps into the arch of the entrance, lets the door swing to beside him. It’s dim in here, and it takes his eyes just a second longer to adjust than it should.

A few lamps are spread around the floor. In the dappled shadow sits Ren, at a low table, with his back to the wall. He’s wearing rough robes in a bland off-white. He’s hunched over a sheet of flimsi, pen in hand. Though he’s angled toward the entrance (he wouldn’t put his back to it), he appears not to see Hux--or even sense him.

Hesitant to disturb him, and more than a bit willing to postpone the inevitable blank stare and rejection, Hux watches him for a moment, too absorbed in him to even weigh his options.  
  
Ren has a white-knuckled grip on the quill, and he moves it across the flimsi in jagged, broad, arrhythmic strokes. His eyes are fixed on the page, but distant and unfocused.

Nonetheless, watching him gives Hux a pang of nostalgia--for the mission after Ren had mentioned the calligraphy offhand, the one focusing tool he said he'd come to enjoy. Hux had been obligated to buy something in a weekend market to satisfy local custom, and well, they'd been doing whatever this was for a few months now, and gift-giving, wasn't that what real people did?  
  
Hux had surprised Ren with it after Ren finished the psych ops side of the mission, then he'd proceeded to get so drunk he agreed to let Ren test it out on his skin. It tickled as it went on, the light lines of arabesques and the Order sigil and words (flattering nothings that even fairly plastered, Hux knew were completely misapplied).

Ren hadn't wanted to wait till it had dried, and the ink wound up smeared across his chest and arms and nose. The white bedclothes had been smudged beyond salvaging.  
  
Those hadn't been bad years, the war before Starkiller. Young and insatiable, going from world to world, mission to mission, tent to barracks to executive suite, finding new and innovative ways to soil the sheets.

Major, Commander, briefly Colonel, Lieutenant General Hux, of those days, given the right balance of alcohol and battlefield success, might have affirmed some romantic nonsense about following Kylo Ren to hell and back. He would have called it poetry. He wouldn’t have imagined he’d ever find himself somewhere deep in Ren’s dead mind, watching him practice calligraphy on imaginary paper.

Nonetheless, he’s beautiful, even somewhat peaceful. Hux hates to disturb him, but he has to try. Ren’s presence pulled him here almost organically this time, but that hardly means the connection will hold longer than the past two did. While he’s here, he has to _know._

He clears his throat prominently, then goes for it. “Ren.”

It’s flat, as emotionless as possible. Ren slowly raises his head, peeling his gaze from his handiwork centimeter by centimeter. Head fully upright, he blinks twice at Hux, at first looking no more present than he did when he was writing. Then something like awareness sparks in his eyes. He sets his pen in the ink bottle.

“Hux?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: Hux jealously implies that Rey and Kylo's connection is sexual and/or romantic, which Kylo vehemently denies. | Kylo non-consensually pins Hux to a viewport with the Force, and kisses him before he's quite released him.


	9. Gravity's Silhouette

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, chapter-specific content warnings are in the endnotes!

Relief washes over Hux like a blow. It steals his pent-up breath, gives him an overwhelming inclination to crumple to his knees. He steadies himself against the wall.

Before Hux can respond, Ren’s gone on: “What the hell are you doing here?”

The lamps spread around him on the floor flicker, throwing wavering shadows across his face and darkening his eyes. Hux stumbles over the momentary, mistaken impression that his pupils are blown.

“I-” he starts, unsure where he’s headed.

Ren cuts him off. “Are you dead?”

“No,” Hux manages, shakily. It’s like both times before, except Ren is addressing him. Knows him, as more than a ghost or delusion. Hux’s pulse pounds, a roaring in his ears. They’re close. So damn close.

“Then how are you here?” Ren knits his brows and stiffens slightly, skeptical of his own mind. It’s nothing new.

“Rey’s-- _the Jedi’s--_ ” Hux corrects himself, because he can. “--connection to you is apparently still good for something.”

He takes his hand from the wall, feigning confidence, but balls it in a fist at his side, as if tensing the muscles there will hold the rest of him back, contain the bodily urge to run to him, sink onto his lap, pull him close. He can’t. Not yet. There’s been no such invitation.

Ren still looks infuriatingly wary. “So how’d you convince her to do... _this_?”

“I left her no other option.” It isn’t quite a lie, and besides, it sounds worlds better than, _Apologies, darling. I’m selling her your weakest moments for a chance at suicide._ Than, _I’ve betrayed you._

“Good.” Ren dips his head and returns to his work. For several seconds, his pen snakes across the parchment, trailing ugly, incoherent black lines of ink. Then, without looking up, he says, “Come sit.”

Hux complies half-mechanically. He moves away from the wall that was supporting him, and sinks nearly to his knees at the table, across from Ren.

Before he’s fully settled, though, Ren glances up. “You’re too far away,” he says, flatly. He nods to the empty space to his left, then looks back down again.

“...Alright.” Hux rounds the table and lowers himself to the ground beside Ren.

From this angle, his work somehow looks even more abstract than it did upside-down from across the hut. It looks like he started writing the alphabet at the top of the sheet, ostensibly for practice, but devolved into scribbles after _jensk_.

Hux supposes this is a better outlet than tearing the hut down on his own head, but still. It makes him look almost as much like a madman. His fingers are smudged and flecked with ink.

Ren doesn’t seem to register the discomfort of the silence between them. Hux watches his pen-strokes, unsure where to start. Ren doesn’t seem any angrier or sadder than usual, and certainly not more so than he was in his final months. If anything, the eerie calmness and quiet despair of those days have carried over into this particular hell.

Hux has never known what to do with Ren’s rare serenity. He can do nothing but watch, trying and failing to absorb it.

It shouldn’t be like this--Ren should have flung his arms around him, kissed him dizzy, torn the prison uniform off of him, and pulled him over to the sad, tidy pallet of blankets in the corner. Hux should be balls deep in him right now, not...feeling like he’s watching him through a double-sided mirror.

The silence draws out, broken only by the scratch of Ren’s pen. Just being beside him should be enough, but it isn’t. Few things ever are.

“I’ve been here before,” Hux says, when he can’t stand another second of it.

“Here?” Ren doesn’t look up. “You haven’t.”

“Not _here_. In Chaos. I’ve found you twice before, but this is the first time you’ve--” Hux’s gaze wanders briefly from Ren, flicking to the curves of the walls. “--known me,” he finishes, with effort.

That gets Ren’s attention. His head jerks up, and his grip on the pen tightens. “I’d always know you.” His tone is damn near combative, at once _how-dare-you_ and _I-dare-you-to-disagree_.

“Well, you _didn’t_ ,” Hux replies, with the same sharpness. Ren elicits it far too easily.

Ren’s gaze darkens for a second, and Hux half expects him to raise a hand and try to pin him to the wall. Instead, he scrapes his teeth across his lower lip and deflates. “This place is fucked up.”

Leave it to Ren to voice a complaint, in the midst of the mess he’s unambiguously made. “And whose decision was it to come here?”

“Yours, apparently!” The flash in Ren’s eyes is unmistakable now, but he stays seated. “Certainly not mine.”

Hux inhales, containing an outburst. Ren’s never known how absolutely fucking idiotic he sounds when he’s trying to shirk responsibility.

Hux settles on cold vitriol. “Oh yes, you kill yourself, I find you dead, then follow you to Chaos as soon as possible, and somehow it’s entirely _my_ fault I’m having this conversation in hell.”

Ren’s quiet for a moment, taking far too long to digest this. Then he glances up, brows pinched, and of course ignores Hux’s main point. “You were the one who found me?”  
  
“Of course I  was.” Hux actually scoffs. “Who else would have busted into the Supreme Leader’s quarters to summon you?”   
  
“Oh.” Ren looks back down, draws spirals on the page, like the arms of some dark galaxy. “I- I didn’t think it would be you.”   
  
Hux folds his arms. “Really.”   
  
“No, honestly. I thought nothing would get you off that bridge till the ship went down. I thought—“   
  
“Fuck’s sake, Ren. Come off it,” Hux interrupts him. _How is it humanly possible to be this dead and still this full of shit?_ “It’s fairly clear you weren’t thinking of me at all.”   
  
Ren’s teeth scrape his lower lip, and his gaze doesn’t leave the flimsi. “What was it like?”   
  
“What was it—“ Hux starts to echo, then cuts himself off with a huff. He digs his nails into his palms (probably hard enough they’ll be indented back on Chandrila). “Why the fuck is that relevant? You want to know, what, what you looked like dead?”   
  
“No.” Ren scribbles a bit. “I want to know how long you were away from your post to weep  over me.”  
  
Luckily Hux knows him well enough to catch the crack of a smirk in his deadpan. But that just infuriates Hux more. How can Ren sit here fucking _doodling_ , waxing sardonic about the single most horrific moment of Hux’s life? (Gods, there would’ve been a time the loss of Starkiller held that position.) (Would it still did.)   
  
“I didn’t _weep_ ,” he all but snarls in reply. But his tone wilts against his will. He’s unable to keep up the facade. “Not then.” He inhales sharply. “If you must know, I...touched your hair.”   
  
“You what?” Ren says it softly. He finally looks up again, pen stuck in mid-air.   
  
“You heard me.” Hux swallows, forces his nails deeper into his stinging palms. “I sat beside you, and I didn’t look at you, and I stroked your damn hair until we lost the ship. Happy?”   
  
Ren’s eyes shimmer vaguely, rimming with tears. “Hux,” he says, and purses his lips.   
  
“What?”   
  
“Hux.” The pen falls to the surface of the desk. Ren runs his fingers over his face and through his hair, leaving a smudge on his jaw, next to the scar. His elbows fall in the middle of the wet ink, smearing the bare skin black. He puts his head back in his hands. “I didn’t know.”

_That what, I would give a shit?_ Hux doesn’t say. _Just how fucking deep in your own head were you?_

“Of course you didn’t know,” is what comes out. It sounds arguably more foolish. “You were dead.”

Ren snorts, mocking and defused. “Right.” He picks his pen back up and makes three swift strokes, staccato against the flimsi and the wood of the desk. “I’m dead, so catch me up. Did the Resistance board us or blow us up?”

“They boarded.”

Ren drops the pen again and all but jumps to his feet. “ _So_ they _found me too_?” He glances around the dwelling, like he’s looking for something to pound his rage into, then glares down at Hux, as if Hux is somehow to blame for this, as well.

“Yes, Ren.” Hux stands with as much poise as he can manage. Once on his feet, he meets Ren’s eyes. “There was nothing I could do.” _You should have thought of this before running yourself through._

Ren’s hands are clenched at his sides, jaw set. His gaze probes Hux’s face, perilous. “What did…” he starts. His voice is thick.  “What did they do with me? With my body, I mean.”

Hux wets his lips, and hates how small his voice emerges. “Cremation.”

“Like my grandfather’s?” Ren says it nearly proddingly, rage swirling like a riptide under his tone. Hux is dangerously close to it, with nowhere to flee.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Public?”

Hux winces, but maintains eye contact. “Yes.”

“ _Fuck!_ ” Ren’s features contort with the spike in volume, and the low light of the hut casts him monstrous, inhuman. His fisted fingers squirm at his sides. He leans closer to Hux, asks harshly, “And what about the ashes?”

Hux is dimly aware of his hands clasping themselves behind his back, his professional defensive mechanism, anything to keep from fidgeting. “They went to your-” he stammers, “- to Leia Organa.”

“Fucking _shit_.”

Ren has no lightsaber here, just his bare hands and his voice. It saves the rickety walls of the half-imagined hut, but not his knuckles. They’re bloody after a single blow to the wood, but he keeps at it for two more blows, no dialed-up strength behind his fist here, where there’s nothing but the Force and it doesn’t obey him.

The back of his right hand is a pulpy mess, blood dripping onto the tan bedroll at his feet. Just because he’s a spirit--and perhaps not technically real--doesn’t mean he won’t regret this.

Hux places a hand on his shoulder. “Stop this, Ren. Enough.”

Ren’s hand stills halfway back to the wall, and his shoulders slump, losing the livewire rigidity of his fury. He turns, wiping his hand on the off-white robes. It leaves a stain that won’t come out, but Hux is fairly sure his uniform is immune to the same. He wraps his arms around Ren’s neck, pulling him close.

Ren leans into him, arms encircling his waist, muffling his voice in Hux’s neck. “She doesn’t-- she-- she shouldn’t get to--”

“You’re right,” Hux says simply.

“I would have wanted you to--”

“Scatter you somewhere.” Hux rubs circles in the center of Ren’s back. “I know."  
  
It should be _better_ , holding Ren again, after everything. This is all Hux has been able to imagine, through the hideous blur of the trial, the fantasies of his half-starved brain, long nights of wet dreams, the memories.

Instead it feels inadequate: a Force-projection of himself with its arms around a shade of Ren, who’s angry and suffering and in _fucking_ denial and trapped in a place Hux couldn’t ever have saved him from. It’s objectively pathetic. Futile.

Still, Hux doesn’t let go, only pausing the motion of his hand when Ren pulls back slightly. His hands move to Hux’s upper arms, but he doesn’t meet his eyes, instead studying his chest and _fuck_ \--

As if suddenly noticing Hux’s attire, Ren traces the Republican sigil over Hux’s heart, finger dipping between Hux’s ribs through the uniform’s thin fabric. His brows pinch together, and his voice comes out hushed, half-fearful.

“Hux.” He swallows, runs a finger over the black stitching again. “Why are you wearing this?”

Hux sighs. “It’s a prison uniform, Ren.”

“What?” Ren sounds like he’s been kicked. His hands fall to his sides.

“They emboss it on all the uniforms. Force knows why they waste credits on it.”

“No, I mean.” Ren swallows visibly, and his eyes dart to Hux’s face. “Why are you- why are you wearing it?”

“Because I’m in prison,” Hux replies. It was stupid to attempt to hide the fact when he’s wearing the Republic’s fucking insignia, but he’ll refuse to acknowledge it’s been anything less than obvious.

“How?” Ren’s lips stay half-parted after the syllable emerges. He’s apparently floored.

“What do you mean, how? Of course I’m in prison,” Hux all but spits. “Where else would I be after it all ended?”

“You- you’re not supposed to be in prison. I thought you had captured Rey, and were using her, not the other way around. That isn’t how--”

Hux cuts him off. He’s no longer having to feign his indignance. “What did you _think_ was going to happen to me after you bowed out? Things were just going to go on without you? ”

“Why not?” Ren shrugs, and there’s something pitiful in it that Hux is too pissed to acknowledge.

“That’s really it,” he shoots back. “That’s really what went through your mind before you…” He can’t manage to finish.

Ren doesn’t require him to - he’s ready with excuses. “I wasn’t in my right mind, I don’t know what I was thinking, it was so sudden, I just couldn’t--”

_Bullshit._ Hux could punch him. “You had enough presence of mind to grab me and get yourself a goodbye kiss, or whatever the fuck that was. To satisfy _you_. You weren’t thinking of me.”

“Hux, I--” Ren starts, sharply, then looks down for a moment, studying his own bare feet and the rubber prison-issue slippers Hux is suddenly embarrassed of. It isn’t long before Ren inhales and speaks slowly.

“Once I got here,” he says, “I realized the Order would go on without me. It existed before I joined, I figured it would last after.”

“Even when you saw it falling down around my ears? You said yourself we couldn’t win!”

“But you’re _you_ ,” Ren says, and pauses. Hux can’t decide if the heat in his gaze is anger or something else. “You’re too fucking stubborn to care.”

Under other circumstances, Hux would have almost taken that as a compliment. As it is, he ignores the personal implication. “Ren, I needed a Force user to even be able to keep up the fight. I couldn’t have stood against the Jedi. I needed--” he breaks off in an exasperated huff. _You_ seems both obvious and pathetic.

“So what happened?” Ren asks.

“What do you mean, _what happened_? I’ve already told you the ship went down.”

“But how long were you on the run, after?” Ren’s trying for nonchalance, but his gaze still bores into Hux. “How long did it take for her to root you out?”

“Not long.” It’s all Hux is going to give him, two words with an unnatural beat in between, like stringing together a pair of glass beads. Ren apparently expected so much more of him.

But Ren’s also insistent. “Weeks, months, a year? There’s no time here. I have no idea how long it’s been.”

Hux swallows. This isn’t his own fault for being weak and a disappointment - it’s Ren’s for failing to notice how much he meant to Hux, for killing himself in the first place.  “It was the same day,” he says.

“The day I died?” Ren sounds far too young.

“So I said.”

“But you could have gotten away. I couldn’t handle it anymore, but there were a few solid ships left, a couple planets.” Ren shakes his head. “I mean, you still had something. How’d you manage to fuck that up?”

What does he want Hux to do, spell it out for him?

“You fucked it up,” Hux answers instead. “All our battle plans accounted for you being there to pull your weight. We couldn’t rewrite in the middle of a bombardment.”

Ren gnaws his lip. “Then I’m sorry I killed your empire.”

“A lot of good that’ll do me now.” The ice in his tone isn’t wholly contrived, and Ren counters it with what Hux would call whinging, were the topic anything else.

“You don’t know what it was like, at the end. I couldn’t have done anything else. Couldn’t have kept on like that.” Ren’s eyes shimmer with tears for the first time that Hux has seen in Chaos, but he can’t summon any sympathy.

“You left me,” Hux bites out, and takes the slightest step backward.

“I thought you’d move forward without me.”

“You didn’t think anything at all.” Hux’s own throat works, and he smiles grimly.  “And you left.”

Ren steps forward, closing the distance between them. “You don’t understand--”

“ **You left me** ,” Hux hisses. Doesn’t Ren fucking get it?

“What else could I have done?” he says. The tears don’t disappear, but there’s a flare of anger to match them now. “I told you I couldn’t face them all again. What was I supposed to do, rot in prison like you are now?”

“Run away.” It comes out like that instead of like _save me_ , the thought he hasn’t let himself entertain. To flee would have been just as much a coward’s way, but one somewhat less permanent, and infinitely less selfish. “You could have taken me with you.”

“Would you have come?”

“Perhaps.”

Ren shakes his head, not even bothering to call it a lie. They both already know. “And if you had--” He’s _humoring_ Hux, which is mortifying. “--would you have been content with it?”

“Would you?” Hux says, evading. But it’s a fair question to the self-proclaimed fulcrum of galactic history.

Ren ignores him, dodging likewise. “You wouldn’t have. You wouldn’t have been content with anything less than total victory, no matter what I asked of you. I knew where your priorities lay.”

_Not with me_ goes unspoken, and anger unfurls in Hux’s chest, for the first time unmitigated by grief and regret. It’s a personal attack, pointing the blame.

“ _Bantha shit_ ,” Hux retorts, with more vehemence than is strictly called for, pauses for a moment to lower his voice. “You wanted it just as much as I did.”

Ren recoils, eyes flashing, and Hux wonders--for the second time and perhaps unfairly--if a blow is coming. But the flare of rage dies, and Ren’s posture slackens. He looks at Hux with something grossly akin to pity. “Once,” he says. “I did once.”

He might just be talking about his own failure to shoulder the burden of leadership, but this sounds too much like giving up, like betrayal. It should piss Hux off, but instead it feels like a gut-punch, like internal bleeding. When he can manage words, his voice is splintered--but still somehow cold.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t want what we had.”

Ren only hears the ice, and his gaze hardens again. “What we had isn’t the same as what we did.”

And that’s the core of the whole Light conundrum: the high-and-mightiness of his gaze, the unearned tone of superiority. Like Hux and the life he’s made are beneath Ren, somehow _wrong_ . It’s hypocritical beyond belief, and worse still, it _hurts_.

“If it was so terribly unethical, why the fuck didn’t you stay to face justice? I’m sure that would have pleased your Light.”

“Hux--”

Hux doesn’t want to hear it. “Because you’re a damn coward, because you’re too fucking selfish, because--”

“ _Fuck_ you, H--”

The Force doesn’t let him finish the syllable.

The connection snaps abruptly, and Ren’s presence evaporates, leaving Hux in darkness for a moment before returning him to the dull chemical light of the conference room and the ragged sound of Rey’s breathing.

Rey’s pallid, and a light sweat plasters stray wisps of hair to her forehead. Her wiry hands tremble on the tabletop. She doesn’t speak, just shuts her eyes, inhaling and exhaling. She does so four times, deeply, before speaking.

“That wasn’t me,” she says, still unsteady. “That wasn’t me. I didn’t have to reach out to him. It was like how it happens when I’m asleep, except--”  


“Well.” Hux cuts her off, but curses his own voice - it’s little more stable than Rey’s, and shame is beginning to slip into it. Those aren’t the kind of things that should have been said in front of any third party, least of all the enemy. “Maybe it took his initiating to get you what you wanted. And that. Should have answered all of your questions. Since he wanted to spell it all out for me,” Hux adds, by way of explanation.

But for some reason, she shakes her head. “I couldn’t sense any of it, Armitage. That’s the strange part. It must have been just the two of you there. All I got was darkness, so I’m sure my connection was in play, but I-- I don’t know what to make of it.”

That much is a relief. Even if he’ll now have to come up with a decent sequence of memories that manage to encapsulate that conversation, at least she didn’t hear how ugly it was. Returned to reality, to the phantom pain where Ren should be, Hux already regrets it.

“If it’s any help, I’m sure it won’t happen again,” he says, dignified.

Rey tilts her head to one side, brow furrowing. “Why not?”

“Didn’t end well.” Hux studies the glint of the lampdisk on the open binders, the dull, blank bulb of the tiny light between them.

Rey doesn’t respond for a while, lets nearly too much silence pass. “I’m sorry,” she says at last, and doesn’t ask for details. “I’m sorry.”

 

* * *

 

He dreams of Ren tonight, both of them half-clothed in a vacant, windowless conference room,  Ren’s bare ass bathed in the dim light of a single lampdisk overhead. Ren’s hands are splayed on the wall in front of him, long, thick fingers curling into the grooved paneling.

Hux’s left hand is wrapped around Ren’s torso, resting just above his belt, steadying him as Hux thrusts into him. His pace isn’t rough, and he’s hardly pulling in and out, instead rolling his hips in a way Ren seems to be enjoying, mere centimeters from his bent back.

He’s clenching around Hux’s cock, arching back into him in an involuntary plea for _more_ and _deeper_. He’s crying out, too--choked, muffled sounds, like he knows better than to make too much noise in here--but growing louder, moans and whines coalescing into Hux’s name.

Hux sinks deeper, all the way to the base, and Ren is hot around him, and so deliciously, unbearably tight.

“ _Hux_.”

Louder than before, but not damningly so, not yet. Still, on impulse, Hux doesn’t draw out. Instead, he presses his chest into Ren’s back, wrapping around him and placing his lips next to Ren’s ear. He slips his right hand around Ren’s neck, then up to cover his mouth.

“Do you want to get the staff’s attention?” Hux whispers. “Do you want to be so loud for me that they come in and find us?” Ren’s lips work soundlessly against Hux’s fingers, brushing them lightly. “What will they think when they see you like this, their commander, bent over for me with your cock dripping?”

Ren sighs against his hand, a burst of heat and another twitch of the soft lips against Hux’s bare skin, the lingering _oh_ of a scarcely-audible moan. It’s that sensation--the obscene intimacy of Ren’s desperate mouth--that brings him off before he can withdraw for a final thrust.

The burst of brightness behind Hux’s eyelids startles him awake. Staring into the midnight grayness, he registers the softening of his cock before he does the warm wetness in his uniform trousers or the low hum in the back of his skull.

He curses Ren as he staggers off his cot to clean up, but doesn’t mean it.

_That_ was how things should have ended in Chaos today--wrapping around each other, despite it all, not rehashing the same tired arguments that tormented the Order’s final year.

There’s no point to any of it, now, and at zero dark thirty, cleaning semen off his thigh in the

‘fresher corner of his cell, Hux regrets. He apparently wasted the few minutes he had with Ren on severing their connection, all him this time, with Rey barely present, barely exerting herself. He has no idea if he’ll have the opportunity to make it right.

Hux slips into his spare pair of trousers and heads back to the cot. He curls up on his side and dozes fitfully, between dreams of the burning temple and the ink on Ren’s hands.

 

* * *

 

 

Hux is shocked when it takes just two cycles--no, six pages--no, two days for the guards to come collect him again.

It’s previously taken Rey a bit longer than that to recover from being pulled into Chaos, and surely the suddenness of the last connection should only exhaust her more. Nonetheless, the wardens announce his visitor and escort him out of his cell.

It’s even more astounding that they skip the turn for Visitor Control, and instead turn toward the lower security wing, as if taking him to the courtyard again.

As they pass the chow hall, the unmistakable racket of a brawl seeps out into the corridor: the scrape of an overturned bench on linoleum, inane shouts, a beleaguered guard yelling for the combatants to break it up. Hux risks a glimpse through the windows in the locked double doors. It’s a roiling sea of gray uniforms, everyone on their feet. Overturned trays lie forsaken in the floor, green syrup leaking from beneath them.

He wouldn’t have lasted in this wing, with only a shattered reputation and some lean muscle to defend himself. It’s almost certainly why he’s kept alone, by the Republic’s logic: for his own safety, not as punishment. (But they had to have known, of course, that his own safety is a punishment in itself.)

The clamor fades as they press on, finally stopping outside an unadorned gray door that Hux recognizes as the courtyard entrance. The guards key themselves in, and for the moment before they escort him over the threshold, sunlight floods the hallway.

Rey is sitting cross-legged in the shadow of the maximum security wing, beside the bed of orange gargrells. Even in the twilight of Hux’s first visit, they’d looked vibrant, but they’re positively boisterous in the late morning sun. They’ve grown in the two weeks since Hux was last here, livid green stalks at least ten more centimeters above the wooden edge of the plot.

Rey doesn’t stand, just greets Hux with a controlled smile and dismisses the guards with a wave of her hand. As the door clanks shut behind him, Hux’s binders drop to the grass. Rey beckons him over before he can kick off his shoes.

“Have a seat,” she says, with cool politeness. Her back is stiff--none of the relaxed muscles of meditation.

Hux complies and lowers himself, criss-crossing his legs to mirror Rey. “We’re back out here today?” he asks. “Didn’t think you had anything else to be sorry for.”

Rey shakes her head. “It isn’t that. It’s… I think it’ll help, being out here, if we’re going to try reaching out to him again. The Light is much stronger outdoors than inside this dreadful place.” She jerks her head toward the drab gray building behind her, with its narrow tinted windows.

Hux plucks at a blade of grass beside him, but doesn’t break eye contact. “You want to try again?”

“Of course I do,” Rey says. “Just because his direct connection with you broke off doesn’t mean I can’t still attempt contact.”

Hux tries not to let her wording sting. “So what am I showing you to earn this?” He all but spits it, and has failed.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Rey’s expression is almost unnervingly soft. “If you don’t mind me watching your resolution, I think it might be more beneficial than a memory. For all of us.”

Relief washes over Hux, relaxing the involuntary tension in his shoulders and back. _A second chance._

He imagines Ren’s lips against his hand, Ren tight around him--sensations just two nights old.

And his mind wanders further back, to the images that _never_ leave his mind--Ren’s crooked smile, his strong hands around the grip of his lightsaber. But also to the unnatural angle of his leg when Hux found him too late. To Chaos: the haughtiness in his tone ( _where your priorities lay_ ), his bleeding knuckles.

He’s willing to try again if Rey is. He has to be.

“I suppose,” he says, and lets her take his hand.

.

 

.

Chaos materializes around Hux in a spectrum of blurred grays, fuzzy at first, like a pixelated Holo call, until it acquires the stark lines of a Star Destroyer’s interior design, the relatively higher ceilings of the _Supremacy_. The twilit expanse of the near-vacant training ring.

Hux stands close to the center of it and surveys the debris at his feet. No fewer than ten red training dummies lie gutted, charred black around the rents, spilling polyester filling onto the floor like nerf carcasses waiting to be scavenged. The wolf responsible stands in their midst, his black-robed back to Hux. His head moves slowly, as if he’s looking at the damaged equipment with something like awe.

Hux neither sees nor smells the lightsaber, but that isn’t enough to bet his physical wellbeing on. He has no idea what happens if you sustain a mortal injury in Chaos, but at any rate, he doesn’t fancy dying before they have this out. He clears his throat quietly.

“Ren?” Hux says softly, with the controlled, patient tone he’s perfected over the years, for exclusive use on Ren when in perilous mood.

“Don’t call me that.” Ren doesn’t turn around, voice groundquake-deep.

_Shit_. This isn’t off to a terribly lucid start.

Hux inhales, keeps his mask up. “Is there something else you’d prefer?”

“You _never_ call me that,” Ren grits out, taut and dangerous, then turns slowly. Instead of locking on Hux, his gaze darts around the room behind him, taking it in with a wild, hunted look. He doesn’t seem to see him at all.

Hux spares a glance down, making sure he hasn’t disappeared. Pale arms, wrinkled gray slacks, black clogs--present and accounted for.

Bolstered, he replies, “As far as I’m aware, I don’t generally call you anything else.”

“Cut the shit, Rey.”

Idiotically, it hurts, her name on his lips like that. Ren isn’t on a first name basis with anyone else, not even Hux. (Never mind that that’s by mutual preference.) But what’s worse is the apparent reversion: they’re back to where they were before the Temple. No hope of resolution.

Still, Hux tries. “I’m not Rey.”

“I said cut the shit.” Ren’s eyes flash, lethal but still unfocused, wary. “I can feel it’s you.”

“Ren.” Hux lingers briefly on the word, tries to re-explain.“I’m here by her abilities, like I said yesterday, so that’s probably why you sense her.” _Why do you know her better than me?_ he doesn’t say. “This is the only way I can see you.”

Why is she the one Ren feels, when Hux is standing right here? When he hates her. (When Hux. Doesn’t hate _him_.)

Ren shakes his head. “What are you even doing here?” He strides forward, unaware how much of the distance between them he’s closed. They’d be nearly eye-to-eye if Ren would just look at Hux; instead he keeps staring over his shoulder, past him.

Hux isn’t sure where to go from here, unsure if Ren even remembers yesterday’s conversation. Perhaps it feels like a thousand years ago, here. Perhaps Chaos took the memory. Or perhaps Ren wouldn’t speak of it, even to Rey. He’s certainly retained all the storminess of two days ago.

Hux stills his lips, suddenly aware they’re trembling. He keeps them pursed for a moment before he’s steady enough to speak. “I just told you. I came to see you.”

“To see this?” Ren nods at the shredded equipment, tipping his chin up with his trademark fragile arrogance.

“No--” Hux starts.

“This wasn’t me,” Ren cuts him off, inexplicably defensive. “It was this way when I got here. I didn’t--” Ren’s breath hitches as he pauses, and his eyes glitter with tears, even in the half-light.

“I believe you,” Hux says, because there’s still no sign of the lightsaber. But even if the weapon were smoking in Ren’s hand, this isn’t the place for a diatribe. What does he expect Hux - or Rey - to do, upbraid him for destroying imaginary First Order property? In Hell?

Moreover, he looks so pitiful over it, so futilely defensive, that Hux couldn’t accuse him if he tried. He wants to hush the tenseness out of him. Just to hold him.

“You always believe me,” Ren says, trying to scoff. His teeth worry his plush lower lip, scraping at dead skin.

“About the important things,” Hux admits. He isn’t speaking for Rey.

“It’s a weakness.”

“I know.”

Ren’s quiet, and his gaze roves the far side of the ring again, apparently cataloguing everything but Hux. It’s unbearable, being invisible in front of him, just a disembodied, misattributed presence.

“It was his, too,” Ren finally says. “His weakness, though he didn’t know it.”

“Do you mean--” Hux starts, breaking off before _me_ can uselessly escape his lips. His own eyes prickle with tears, but Ren’s threaten to spill. He looks so lost, so _alone_. Trapped, searching for something that isn’t here.

On impulse, Hux reaches up to cup his face. His skin is warm to Hux’s cool skin, and Hux traces the puckered ridge of the scar with his thumb. He trails from above Ren’s eye down his cheek to his jaw, the line of it unyielding and unbroken, like a death-march route pencilled onto a planetary map.

Ren doesn’t react. Doesn’t so much as blink. Hux caresses him again and again, receiving nothing. Ren’s the dead one--Hux shouldn’t feel like a ghost. He drops his hand as Ren’s lips part.

“I’ve been trying to reach out to him, since I saw him,” he says, softer now, sounding close to shattering, “but it doesn’t work.”

It’s devastating at first, between the words themselves and Ren’s hopeless expression, but _oh._ He’s wrong.

“No, Ren,” he starts, “Listen, I’ve dreamt--”

Ren shakes his head, with a weary finality that silences even Hux. “If you see him, tell him I’m sorry.”

Hux wants to grab him again, shake him sensible. Two nights back, he had his most vivid dream yet, and if Ren’s been reaching out, it surely can’t be a coincidence. But then again, Hux’s own imagination has always been active, and it’s just as certain Ren would have _known_ if he’d gotten through.

At any rate, Hux doesn’t know how to fix it, and the despair in his face saps Hux of any potential argument.

“Tell him,” Ren repeats. “Please.”

It would be so easy to take his chin, force eye contact. Shout, _I’m here, you idiot_ , _I forgive you. (I love you.)_ But it would accomplish nothing. He gives Ren the only comfort he can.

“I will,” Hux manages, around the lump in his throat.

“Thank you,” Ren tells the wall far behind Hux. Takes a ragged breath. “He’ll know what for.”

Hux doesn’t quite (though he hopes it’s _everything_ ).

At any rate, there should be an explanation for Rey’s benefit - the promise of information is the only reason he’s here, after all. But before he can properly word a question, the room begins to blur around him, sharp angles and dim chemical lighting blending into watercolor lines, impressionistic and indistinct.

“Ren!” he says, but too late. The _Supremacy_ dissolves around him into the sunshine of early afternoon, the livid green of the grass, the buzz of insects in the courtyard.

“Rey,” Hux starts, before his vision has even focused. For some reason, he means to apologize. He blinks several times, fumbling for words, before his eyesight clears enough to make out Rey’s form. Fallen on her side, legs still curled like they were before. Her skin is deathly pale, and while her side rises and falls, it does so fitfully, faintly.

“Rey?” Hux repeats, this time with inflection. Instinctively, he leans to shake her shoulder. Her robe clings to her skin, damp with perspiration gone clammy.

“ _Rey_ .” Louder now, and he shakes her harder. No response. _Fuck._

He knows reaching out to Ren takes a sizeable amount of effort on Rey’s part, but there was nothing so strong the first time she tried it. But that was a shorter time away, a more tenuous connection. Now she’s outdone herself.

Hux is momentarily at a loss, until he catches the silver glint of her lightsaber in the grass beside her. His pulse picks up, adrenaline tunneling his vision.

Here it is: escape and revenge, the only two desires he’s had left. Automatically, he reaches for it, hand curling tight around the hilt, warmed by the sun. He studies the weapon, fingers ghosting over both activator switches, tracing the divots and contours of the pommels.

It would be so easy. He’d only have to use one of the blades to end this. His index finger hovers the activator, and he could press it. The blade would extend in an instant, electric blue and humming, dimmed perhaps by the sunlight, but smelling like a thunderstorm. An omen on the horizon.

He’d feel the vibration in his bones, and he’d pretend there was a choice. Rey first, and then himself. She’s out far too cold to sense what he’d be about to do, and if she did wake up, and turn the saber on him, he’ll have lost nothing.

Experimentally, he ignites the weapon. It buzzes for a moment, in his hand, singeing the thistles off of a few tall weeds as it extends, the hilt balanced on the edge of his lap.  Rey doesn’t react, and he deactivates the saber.

For some reason, he’s still thinking.

There’s a way to finish this now, finally. This is what he chastised Ren for until the end: the inability (though Hux, paranoid and envious, fancied it unwillingness) to end the war with Rey’s life. There’s no war now, but it would still feel like justice. Like vengeance on the Force for turning against Ren. (For turning Ren against himself.)

Hell, it might just restore the elusive balance: if Hux has seen both its darkest shadow and its beacon of light dead at his feet. He’d turn the blade on himself and know nothing more. (Know peace.)

He toggles one activator, then the other, but can’t manage to press.

Rey’s end and his own oblivion would spell the end of seeing Ren.

Weeks ago, before Hux knew about Chaos, he wouldn’t have had to think, but now giving up on his own life would mean giving up on Ren. He isn’t ready to consign himself to oblivion, not while there’s a chance to keep seeing him. To make this right, somehow, even if Ren seldom knows him, and _fuck_ \--

Perhaps clinging to tiny, painful doses of Ren will be even worse than just ending things. It’ll be like Dathomirian water torture: tied down, going slowly mad between the single drops that fall on your forehead, always coming fewer and further between. Perhaps it will achieve nothing, in the end.

The metal warms under Hux’s touch, fogged in places by perspiration, all deft lines and unyielding grooves.

Perhaps it will achieve nothing, continuing to see Ren.

Perhaps it will only cause him pain. But better to see him and be hurt than never to see him, to give up on any form of closure.

And then there’s Rey. Her breathing is ragged, features drawn, gone white enough to see the veins in her forehead. Rey, who brought him out here in the first place, keeps taking off his binders. Who listens, and who doesn’t seem like she’s feigning sympathy. Who, sometimes, understands.

He could always just take care of himself, leave Rey’s fate to chance. But that seems crueler than the saber: leaving her out unconscious, as the sun reaches its height and the heat of the day. And it would hurt her, if he died on her watch.

At any rate, he needs her. (For the time being, at very least.) With one last thumb stroke over the fusion of the two pommels, Hux sets the lightsaber down beside her, back in the patch of crushed grass he’d taken it from, then stands.

“Fuck you,” he murmurs as he steps over her, but there’s little venom in it. He walks to the courtyard’s single door and presses the comm there, rebelliously identifies himself as Hux.

They know his ID number without asking for it; they also know his location. Within minutes, they’ve sent wardens for him and medics for Rey.

As the guards question him about the binders, then proceed to reinstall them. As they walk him out of the sunlight and through the drafty, bleak interior of the prison, he feels like a ghost all over again.

“This way, Zero Six One Nine Nine.”

Before long, his cell door slides shut in front of him, and he’s left in the blankness of the room, the unbearable synthetic glare of the lampdisk. His lunch is waiting for him: a soy patty, a flimsi carton of blue milk, and a cup of syrup-drenched citrus fruit, in a livid green. It’s so cold in here.

He’s made a mistake.

 

* * *

 

Two weeks pass, each day hell on Hux’s patience and nerves. He begins allowing himself an extra sheet in his flimsipad, after the evening meal, because sleep is near impossible. His lines of dots begin to sag, his patterns to grow sloppy and asymmetrical. He’s distracted, muscles tensed, listening intently for the faintest stirring in the hall.

Every time a warden makes their rounds, he manages to convince himself it’s the visitor control guards, come to retrieve him on Rey’s behalf. Come to lead him to another chance in Chaos. Even in death, it turns out Ren’s as addictive as ever.

Hux plans out his next attempt in excessive detail, lying on his cot. He stares blank-eyed at the blank ceiling, and decides that fuck Rey’s sensibilities, he’ll go right for Ren’s cock this time. Grab him by the waist with one hand and unfasten his trousers (or unravel his robes) with the other. That’ll have to get his attention, whether he can see Hux or not.

Hux will stroke him till he’ll have to feel it, at the savage pace that undoes him in seconds. Till he’s keening and desperate and painfully hard. Till Hux’s ghost-hand is slick with pre-come, and the head of Ren’s cock bobs red between his bony fingers. Till he’s shouting Hux’s name as he climaxes. When he opens his eyes, he’ll see Hux. He’ll have to.

Then Hux will apologize. Before Ren can get a word in. He’ll say _I love you, darling; I miss you so much._ He might even manage, _This is not your fault_ . It will be less than true, but worth it. He’ll kiss Ren, if Ren will allow it.

He isn’t sure where Ren’s hell will be--on the _Supremacy_ again, maybe the _Finalizer_ , some backwater nowhere too desolate for even the Order to have found. But Ren’s also been lonely in some beautiful places. Perhaps it’ll even be one of those.

By the time he reaches page ninety of his flimsipad, on Day 14, he’s memorized four versions of the fantasy, replays them between grids and meals. They all end in multiple orgasms, in Ren’s smile and Hux’s own absolution.

His Chaos-shade’s right hand is sticky with Ren’s come, its left buried in Ren’s hair, when the guards stop outside his cell.

“Zero Six One Nine Nine.”

Hux blinks and sits up, flushing. Hopefully his arousal isn’t visible. He clears his throat, daring to hope.

“Visitor for me?”

“That’s right.”

 

* * *

 

Rey releases the binders as soon as the guards have shut the doors of Private Conference Two. She looks--happy. Well-rested.

Her complexion is rosy, and her eyes are bright, though they’ve lost some of the eagerness they’ve acquired over the past weeks. That hunger is gone, replaced by something steady and peaceful, but no less striking: a reservoir, perhaps, not a river.

“I wanted to thank you, Armitage,” she says. There’s a smile in her voice, but not on her lips.

Hux straightens, draws his hands into his lap, less because he wants to than because he can. “You’re my link to Ren. I did the only thing I could have.”

A shadow crosses Rey’s face, but she doesn’t acknowledge it. “Then I’m glad to hear you felt there were no other options.”

Hux gives her a thin smile.

After another moment, Rey continues, “I’m sure you’ve been wondering what kept me so long.”

“I assumed you were recovering,” Hux says, as blase as possible. To acknowledge the imagined scenarios, the anxiety, the feeling of _limbo_ , would be shameful, somehow.

Rey looks at him evenly. “I still ought to have thanked you sooner.” Her tone holds no suggestion of guilt; she’s merely stating a fact. Perhaps this is the Light Ren hid from: objective, dispassionate; empathetic, yes, but impersonal.

The next second, the sagely look evaporates somewhat, but not entirely. “I-- I’m glad I got the time away, though. I can’t apologize for that.” Rey sounds young again, and just a bit vulnerable. “I needed the time to think. And talk.”

Hux’s brows pinch almost involuntarily. “To whom?”

Rey snorts. “I didn’t share the graphic details of your and Kylo’s sex life with the whole galaxy, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Her smirk lingers for a moment, then she sobers. “Everyone--my friends, I mean--hasn’t known that I’ve been coming here. I guess I never told you that.”

“You didn’t.” It’s hard to determine which is more surprising: the fact that she actually has kept this confidential, or the fact that Hux hasn’t worried about journalists in weeks and weeks

“Well.” Rey glances down for the first time, and Hux’s eyes are drawn under the table, to her hip. For the first time, she hasn’t brought the lightsaber. “I sort of had to come clean once Leia and Finn came to the hospital.” She assumes Hux knows the traitor’s name.

Hux grimaces, somewhere between wryness and genuine disdain. “I’m sure they took that well.”

Rey grins down at her loosely laced fingers, something soft and fond in the expression. “In their defense, they were well within their rights to freak out. I mean, I’ve been telling them I’m doing research at a facility out of town, with the heavy implication that there are fantastic ancient libraries in the mountain villages. They were--”

“Unimpressed?”

“The opposite, actually.” Rey looks back up, still smiling. “I mean, course they were _floored_ , but once I’d explained, they didn’t think it was a bad idea. At least up to the point where I started wearing myself down, and it resulted in... _that._ ”

“Passing out and being left at the mercy of a genocidal maniac?” Hux quirks an eyebrow. He can’t stop the blithe responses. He’s wired, _on_ like he hasn’t been in six months, still high on the mere thought of fixing it with Ren.

“Yeah,” Rey says, “that.” She cocks an eyebrow in return, but doesn’t let the levity last. “I didn’t tell them about the two of you, just so you know. At least not in so many words. They both have a very... _fixed_ view of each of you, so it would have made things more difficult. But I did tell Leia what I’d been experiencing, just that it was dreams, though, not about Chaos itself. And I told Finn how it...affects me.” She pauses, inhales deeply, but keeps going before Hux can formulate a response. “And we decided--well, I decided with their advice--that I need to step back.”

Hux blinks. It’s as if all the warmth has drained from the room. “I’m sorry?”

Rey gives him a sad smile. “ _I_ should be. I took this much too far, for both of us. It’s mentally and physically exhausting, and-- and I’ve stopped seeing him. I think the Force would have me start looking more to the future.”

Hux clenches his hands in his lap, digging the jagged nails into his palms until they sting. He can picture the crescent-smiles they’ll leave in the easily-bruised skin. This is impossible. Rey’s just--abandoning him? Abandoning _Ren_ , after all this time?

Looking to the future. Easy for her to say--Hux _doesn’t have one_.

Hux takes a calming breath, and another, and another.

“Armitage?” Rey asks, after a moment.

It’s difficult to fathom that the concern in her voice is genuine--particularly with this latest cruelty--but the rational part of Hux’s mind knows it is. The same balanced side of him also knows her cruelty isn’t such.

If their positions were reversed, he wouldn’t have wasted the time of day on her and her memories, no matter what Force secrets they would have unraveled. (Or what flaws in the Stormtrooper program.) He would have let her rot, after a brief and invasive interrogation, then yes, relaxed with his boyfriend and looked _forward_.

At any rate, she shouldn’t be bound to Ren, preoccupied with him. That’s Hux’s burden, unique and overwhelming.

He’ll never cast it aside (he doesn’t want to), but he can’t blame Rey for doing so. It’s dangerous, and he’s probably answered most of her questions. At any rate, she said her own visions have stopped.

“If you won’t be returning,” Hux says, stiffly, “I hope you brought my knife.”

“I didn’t say I won’t be returning,” Rey retorts. “Just that I’ll be stepping back. Quite a bit. You’ve answered all my biggest questions, but if something else should come up…”

That sounds like more limbo. That sounds like torture.

“I’m to be your--what, your…Kylo Ren consultant?” Hux falters for a moment, before realizing. _Fuck yes._ She needs him. “In case the visions start up again?”

On some level, it’s a satisfying thought, Ren haunting Rey for news of Hux, forcing her to keep bringing them together. But the gravity of the failed connections--of Ren’s blindness, his madness, his _rejections_ \--extinguishes any sense of gloating Hux could summon.

Rey bobbles her head ambivalently. “Yes, but...I’m not certain they will,” she responds. “Not anymore.”

Hux doesn’t have to ask why.

She thinks for a moment, then continues, “It goes back to when our bond reactivated. At the time I was thinking about him--a lot. Kept replaying everything I knew over and over again, wondering how I’d failed like that, you know?”

“Yes,” Hux says. “I know.”

Rey grimaces, nearly an apology. “You do. Better than I do. And after talking to you, I’ve realized I can’t blame myself.”

Hux pops his lips. “Because you can blame me.” His voice sounds lifeless in his own ears. He can’t manage anger when it’s objectively true.

“No!” Rey runs a hand through her hair, looking almost offended. “Stars no, Armitage. Everything you’ve shown me proves nearly the opposite. Sure, you...encouraged him in the darkness, but his choices were his own. It was. Rather inevitable, I think. Are you honestly telling me you don’t see that?”

Hux does see it. He’s always seen it--Ren’s told him it a hundred times. But it always feels _righter_ , somehow, to take responsibility. Like he owes it to Ren for whatever role he did play, even if Ren would have ended the same regardless of which side of the Force he chose. He knows, with a voracious certainty, that it will never go away. It’s part of the burden.

Still, he shakes his head. “You make a fair point.” But regardless, he’ll live with this always. “You still owe me the knife.”

Rey purses her lips for a long moment, features drawn in ubiquitous regret. “Not yet,” she says.

“That wasn’t our agreement.”

“I told you, I’ll bring it eventually.” Rey drums her fingers on the tabletop, brushes stray wisps of hair off her forehead. “Please just wait. And in the meantime, I’m offering you something else. Not for my research, just as--a thank-you.” She tilts her head to one side. “Would you like to try to see him today?”

Hux blinks. The knife sounds cheap compared to this. “You don’t want a memory first?”

“You might have saved my life last time.” Rey shrugs and stretches out her hand. “I owe you.”

“I suppose,” Hux says, and takes her hand.

.

 

.

In the familiar dark behind his eyelids, the thrumming note starts soft, like a recording playing far off, not like a harp with his blood vessels for strings. It surges, after an indefinite suspension that nearly sets Hux on edge again, but it’s less consuming than it has been, even by the time a faint gray light appears in the blackness, expanding slowly, with architectural symmetry.

As the grayness comes into focus, it only illuminates a more concrete darkness: the blackness of space above, and below it, a black floor strewn with patches of red and orange. Hux blinks as he finds his footing, but the floor underneath is far from solid, shaking with what he knows are the spasms of failing grav controls. He splays his fingers at his sides to steady himself, then glances around.

_Fuck_. Apparently this hell is a grand tour of the _Supremacy._

The red and orange spots are clumps of fallen crimson curtains, burning with an apparently imperishable flame. Dread congeals in the pit of Hux’s stomach, but he forces himself to look around, probing the ground for Ren’s prone form. He doesn’t find it.

Instead, he’s forced to lift his gaze to the dais in the center of the room. The silvered monstrosity is, surprisingly, vacant of an alien corpse--entirely vacant, for that matter. Hux’s gaze sweeps down the broad steps, landing on the dark figure at the foot of them.

Ren has his knees pulled nearly to his chest. He’s fidgeting with two pieces that look like they would form a lightsaber hilt. Hux steps closer, however, and finds they’re mismatched: The darker metal and crossguard of Ren’s weapon in his right hand, the lighter casing and exposed blue crystal of what must be the family heirloom he once obsessed over in his left.

Hux is two paces from him before he acknowledges his presence.

“Did you come to tell me these are a lost cause?” Ren stares at his feet, but his voice has lost none of its edge.

“No, Ren,” Hux starts, taking another step forward, “I--”

“I’m not fucking trying to fix them,” Ren says, as if he hadn’t heard him.

Hux purses his lips, forces patience. “That’s all right, Ren. I just--”

“Get out of here, Rey.”

“I’m not Rey,” Hux insists.

Ren looks up, but his gaze remains unfocused. He’s examining the ceiling, not meeting Hux’s eyes. “I’m so tired of this.”

Hux is, too. He’s fucking exhausted. He drops into a crouch in front of Ren, even as the floor convulses again. This is the time, of course, to follow the plan. Go for Ren’s belt first, and answer questions later. But Hux can hardly move, much less initiate sex. He barely manages to speak, voice cracking and worn thin.

“What can I say, darling?” he whispers. “What can I do to show you?”

Ren doesn’t respond, but his gaze finally levels, meeting Hux’s, or at least it should be. “I’d rather it were him.”

On impulse, Hux reaches for Ren’s hand. It’s limp in Hux’s own, but solid, warm. The ship groans, and Hux closes his eyes to concentrate. Ren can’t quite manipulate the Force here, but perhaps he’s receptive to it--Hux _remembers._

It’s a rush of sensations, really, nothing so orderly as what he shows to Rey. It’s the taste of Teziretts and the grit of salt between their lips; it’s the clap of the explosion on Ganthel, the burn of imported whiskey, the warm buoyancy of the mineral sea.

And it’s what Rey hasn’t seen, wouldn’t know: water showers after planetside missions, Hux’s embarrassing gasp the first time the mask came off, the velvet heat of Hux’s tongue inside Ren; it’s Ren on his knees and Hux’s fingers in his hair; it’s after Ren returned from Ganthel, and Chandrila was theirs, and neither of them could stop laughing.

The room shakes again, interrupting him, another contraction of the failing system. Hux opens his eyes, to find Ren’s gaze still intent on him.

“You’re right,” he says, voice catching on the consonants.

Hux doesn’t have time to respond--to ask if that means he knows him--before the floor and ceiling both tremble and creak, then press toward one another with a noise like a roar.

“ _Ren_!” Hux shouts, to no avail. His eyes fly open again as the room collapses.

.

 

.

It takes a moment for Private Conference Two to resolve, and Hux drags his hand across his prickling eyes. Rey withdraws her hand in silence, leaving a chill as she exposes his wrist. Her lips are pursed, her eyes cast down.

She says nothing for what feels like a standard minute, while Hux sniffs and swallows and blinks like he’s just disturbed a dusty room.

“Did you catch the end of that?” he says at last. “I think I was starting to get through to him, I--”

Hux breaks off as Rey glances up, looking closer to tears than he feels. She shakes her head, but still manages a sad smile.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I know how much you want this. But I didn’t sense anything.”

“But he said--”

Rey’s already stood, rounded the table. “We’ll drive ourselves crazy, Armitage.” She places a hand briefly on Hux’s shoulder before making for the comm by the door. “This is for the best.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: Hux fantasizes about jerking Kylo off before he’s consented (possibly without his realizing who Hux is), but doesn't follow through with it.


	10. In a Dark Place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flagging the chapter-specific content warnings for anyone who may be triggered by the Disordered Eating tag. Stay safe, friends <3

Hux’s backbone digs into his cell wall, hunched as he is over the flimsipad on his lap. He would use his pillow as a buffer between his bones and the paneling, but he’s in the habit of bearing down on it, balancing the thin sack of polyester across his crossed legs. He grips the stylus like it’s going to fly out of his hand, face bent bare centimeters above the page.

He’s putting the finishing touches on his mandala, in the idle hours between throwing away two-thirds of his lunch and throwing away two-thirds of his dinner.

Still in the adjustment period to his new round of, well, suicide by starvation, his hands tremble, and his stomach whines sporadically. He’s been hyper-focused on the most detailed design he can manage through the heavy fog of hunger and the foreboding, but distant and less relevant, cloud of despair.

A week ago, Hux turned back to his own devices.

To his credit, he also gave Rey that long to return, precisely twenty-eight pages, before realizing that the stagnant periods between her visits would break his mind long before she turned over the knife (if she ever would). He couldn’t stand the feeling of-- _stalling_ , lack of momentum. He was accomplishing nothing, waiting for her to return so he could _maybe-perchance-possibly_ keep earning his incentive--that was, if she hadn’t privately decided he would permanently be more use to her alive.

He loathed the in-betweenness and uncertainty of it, the nagging question of _what if she doesn’t come back, what if I survive twenty years here, without Ren, waiting for her?_ The thought, it turned out, weighing down on him like a pall, had taken Hux’s appetite all on its own. From there, cutting back again had been easy.

He’s being more careful about it this time than his first attempt, before Rey. He was at a total fast back then, consuming only water, and had fainted of dehydration, triggering the hospital stay.

This time, he’s basing the newfound caution on the vague, deranged goal of avoiding any further fainting incidents, a red flag to the wardens, and a round-trip ticket back to the infirmary. So now he’s flushing most of his food, slowly shrinking his portions: it’s less obvious, this way, that he’s dying.

Last week, he allocated himself two items off of each meal tray, and disposed of the rest down the latrine. He’s noticed weight loss in the mirror, even as diminished as he already is--a bit more definition around the ribs and sternum. Ideally, he’ll wear himself down to nothing within a few months, and suffer a fatal cardiac event in his sleep.

This week, per his calculations, he’s eating one item at each meal. He’ll stay at one item for the next two weeks, then after, cut that item in half. It should slow his metabolism, and train his stomach to complain less.

He usually picks whatever sorry excuse for a fruit or vegetable the Republic’s sorry penitentiary budget can offer him. He eats slowly and meticulously, and stretches his grid-making between meals.

Now, he clenches the stylus until his knuckles blanch, bites down on his lip as he traces a perfectly even line about a centimeter long between the last dot in the right corner and the point diagonal from it.

He won’t deny that the mandala sharply resembles the Order’s insignia--a central circle fanned by tidy rays. This, however, is far more elaborate, the rays themselves composed of chains of connecting lines. Layered concentric hubs comprise the center, textured in between by perpendicular strokes, like rows of sutures.

Ren would laugh at this--at _Hux_ , doodling in bed with his stubble coming in and his hair loose, hanging to his chin when he leans forward. He doesn’t contemplate what Ren would think of the rest of it: the gnawing cavity of his stomach, the way his shoulder blades poke through the thin fabric of the uniform, and the words _fucking cold_ always on the tip of his tongue. (It’s high summer, but the rapid emaciation erects gooseflesh on his skin--he shudders at each fresh blast from the cooling system.)

He lifts the stylus, and the unit kicks on again, buzzing in the silence of solitary confinement. Hux chafes at his arms, still holding the writing utensil. As he studies the completed piece, the number in the upper right corner draws his gaze, though it’s bisected by a diagonal line segment.   


(The end.)

“No,” he hisses at it aloud, “no, no, no, no, no--”

With unsteady hands, he turns the flimsipad right side out again--he had it bent backward over its binding to draw on the reverse of a page. Maybe he miscounted the first time, maybe there’s more waiting for him.

There isn’t: just black plast cover, resistant to a stylus.

_“_ Fuck.”

He thumbs back through the pad in a sort of flurry. Every page is fully covered. The stylus falls from his suddenly nerveless fingers, and he brushes it, with the flimispad, into the floor.

 

* * *

 

Three days later, Hux flings down _The Symphony of the Spark_ in disgust. It isn’t just the novel’s insufferable prose, though, but his own inability to focus. His hunger has flared up again, and he’s weathering it, as he’s conditioned himself to do.

Sometimes it feels like a kick to the gut, like his organs are falling in on themselves. Others, it’s closer to something eating _him_ , some cold, amphibious creature with fine, miniscule teeth, gnawing persistently at the lining of his stomach. Now it’s the animal, and not even the opportunity to mock pretentious Republican sex euphemisms can numb its bite.

He tips his head back to study the ceiling, resting his skull against the duraplast of the wall. He shuts his eyes after a moment. Inhales, exhales. Wonders how long it will take for this to kill him.

It wouldn’t be so miserable if he weren’t _bored_. If he had anything else in the galaxy to occupy him but the thought of food--and just beyond it, past the fog of hunger, the grief and regret he’s trying to smother.

His flimsipad gave him that distraction, of course, for three to four hours a day. It was easier to focus on that than the books, if only because of the interactive element. It takes discipline to force yourself to design and do, where reading allows the mind a measure of passivity. (Passivity is not, and has never been, allowed.)

“Zero Six One Nine Nine.”

Hux slowly tilts his head forward, blinking lethargically at the guard sliding a mealtray through the slot halfway up the cell door. He would ask the woman for a new flimsipad if he thought it would do any good, if he didn’t have _oh-so_ much dignity remaining.

“Dinner.”

Hux grunts his acknowledgment and staggers off the cot to get it, steadying himself against the wall as the blood drains from his head. He takes the tray off the extension it rests on, and the guard locks the slot behind it. Once he’s finished with its contents, Hux will return to the door and replace the tray on the extension exactly seventy minutes later, by the chrono across the hall.

Right now, the guard steps back, then trundles her cart to the next cell, some meters down the corridor. The wheels rattle against the linoleum as Hux returns to his bed and repositions himself. He sets the tray in front of him on the cot, and lifts the lid to evaluate the contents.

It smells better than it has any right to, the sweet notes of the greenish sauce they’ve drowned the legumes in mingling deliciously with the savory roasted poultry and the violet spice they’ve rubbed it with. There’s a little plast cup of pink frostberry juice beside a squatty bottle of water. About ten wide slices of Brekka beet dominate the lower right compartment, and a vac-sealed chunk of brown bread rests beside it, plast wrap dipping into the beet juice.

In the lower left compartment rests a stingy slice of white cake with white icing. It’s all Hux can do not to take it in both hands and drag his tongue through the frosting.

He salivates just looking at it. It would melt in his mouth. It would thrill him. And it would ruin everything.

He closes his eyes, breathes deeply, and battens down the urge. He isn’t allowed to eat just any item off the tray: he takes nutrient density into account (this much, he can still control). He eats minimum calories for maximum fullness.

To restrain himself, he lifts the blunt plast fork and scoops up the cake with it. With the other hand, he holds up the cup of juice, then dumps the cake into it. There’s little enough juice that it doesn’t even splash. He watches the pink liquid soak into the cake, stripping it of its texture, rendering the icing watery. He sets the concoction down and goes for the safest item here.

The poultry would be low in calories if it weren’t such an unfathomably massive piece. He neglects it (he wouldn’t be able to just eat half, he’s too weak). He rules out the legumes on the basis of that thick sauce, the bread on its likely glucose contets. That leaves the beets.

He forces himself to eat slowly, not inhale the food like his tempted stomach is screaming for him to do. He halves each beet slice before chewing it fully, three times on each side, and swallowing. The beets are largely flavorless, entirely unseasoned, but they quiet his stomach at least. By the chrono outside, it takes him from 1735 until 1741 to finish them.

Once done, he chugs the entire bottle of water, and listens for the footsteps of guards. The coast sounds clear, so he picks up the tray and swings his legs over the side of the cot again. He crosses the cell, stopping in front of the latrine, and bends to set the tray in the floor, picking up the cup of cake and juice. The concoction has turned almost milky, eddies of clotted icing floating like an oil slick on the surface of the liquid. He dumps it into the latrine and flushes.

He spaces the legumes and meat out over the hour until he knows they’ll return for his tray, and has to rip up the cold poultry to make sure it won’t clog the drain.

Once the same guard has picked up the tray, he lies down. The last time he sees on the chrono is 1957. He dreams of the cake.

 

* * *

 

Almost a week later --by Hux’s best calculations, anyway--the chrono reads 1440, and Hux is staring at it, propped up on his cot. Without the flimsipad or the patience for the novels, he spends most of his days in just this position, thinking--sometimes, remembering. His pillow seems to be growing gradually thinner, but cognitively, he’s aware that his own body just offers less padding between bone and wall.

Last night, they served him a highly-processed sandwich, breaded meat between two gummy slices of bread. Good thing he’s still on one item per tray, because there was only one edible thing on it: a container of fresh dewberries, bursting with juice. The other sides left grease-stains on the plast beneath them.

A sandwich one night usual means rice or legumes the next, which usually come with a decent, bland and undefiled vegetable. Hux is looking forward to it.

If he had something to write with and on, he would be recording each meal’s contents in hopes of detecting a pattern, but no, he had to be _inventive_ and waste his flimsiplast on the grids and drawings. That resource would have been infinitely better spent analyzing food, the main thing that matters. He’s banished the filled flimsipad to the corner with the novels in his frustration with himself.

If it’s a proper vegetable tonight, he hopes it’s a decent helping of a purple cruciferous, unidentified thing that comes periodically, crunchy and filling, but clearly mostly water. The galley doesn’t add sauce or margarine to it, and he eats the florets and stalks alike. He turns the vegetable over and over in his mind’s eye, savoring it.

His thoughts wander, mentally scanning the plate that might come with it: a heap of brown rice, a filet of red meat, a sticky white roll, a glob of pudding. He places the images side by side with last night’s, evaluating probabilities, but his attention keeps returning to the greasy sandwich, soaking through the bread, the sheen of the oil on the kajaka root chips, spilling into two tray compartments.

He didn’t eat them last night, and he won’t let himself if they bring them again. He turns the sandwich and the crisps over in his mind, and--though it’s far from a harmless vice--allows himself to remember.

 

_Hux glances from the miniature holotank on his desk to his datapad screen, tapping the latest casualty numbers from the ongoing struggle for Er’Kit. The_ Finalizer _has been docked above the desert planet’s capital for two weeks now, while the Order beats back a surprisingly resourceful insurgency._

_Lieutenant-General Hux--this his first campaign run from Peavey’s ship--has been docked to his desk all afternoon, drafting a longform update for High Command based on this morning’s briefings. The chain of briefings took longer than usual, and then there was the cooling system failure in the hangar, and the need to scramble engineers before tech started frazzling from the dry heat outside the ship._

_Technically speaking, he slept last night, but fitfully. Alerts from the ground awakened him at intervals, which would have been an annoyance under normal circumstances. He isn’t strictly required to keep them on, but Ren is down there in the city--alternately using the Force to sway hearts and minds, and to detect explosives. He isn’t sleeping properly, anyway, with half the bed empty and the whole room off-balance. Might as well stay informed._

_The insomnia is doing little for his concentration, though, nor is the hunger that’s only returned angrier after hours of ignoring it. He ate through the stock of ration bars he keeps in here within the first three days of the campaign, and hasn’t been able to replenish them. And he isn’t getting up from this desk until the report is submitted; leaving runs the inevitable risk of distraction._

_So he swallows in an effort to quiet his stomach, dismisses a notification from the hangar staff without reading it, and keeps typing. He doesn’t hear the doors slide open, only detects the chime of an officer’s entry code. He’s aware of someone standing in front of the desk, but doesn’t bother reprimanding them for barging in. He just needs to get them out as soon as possible._

_“Report,” he says, absently, without looking up._

_“You weren’t in the hangar.”_

_The crackle of the vocoder sends a wave of relief through Hux. He tries not to let it show, but at least grants Ren the boon of eye contact. (Or the closest they can come to it, with the mask on.)_

_“I can’t always be your welcoming committee,” Hux snaps, and gestures between the holotank and the datapad. “I’m working on a report for High Command. Do you have anything to contribute?”_

_“In fact I was planning to brief you.” Without invitation, Ren pulls out the chair on the other side of Hux’s desk._

_It’s then that Hux notices the white plast bag in Ren’s left hand, which he proceeds to slap onto the desktop before collapsing into the chair. He unfastens the mask and removes it with the usual hiss. He’s been sweating underneath the helmet, despite its ventilation mods, and wisps of dark hair clings to his forehead. He brushes them out of the way._

_Hux ignores this display in favor of the foreign object between them. He nods to the bag. “What is_ this _?”_

_“You haven’t eaten,” Ren states, no question in it. He reaches into the bag and pulls out disposable napkins and two flimsi parcels--one a smaller bag, folded over at the top; the other, a wrapped object. “Karkan ribene sandwich.” He points to the wrapped item, then to the sack. “Flash-fried zuchii.”_

_Hux raises his eyebrows, though his mouth is watering at the savory scent, rich and heavy, with just a hint of seasoning. “Which contain?”_

_“Don’t ask, just eat.” Ren unwraps the massive sandwich first, and proffers half of it to Hux with a napkin. The flatbread oozes with an orange-ish sauce, and purple and green leaves poke out around a core of red and shredded meat._

_Hux takes it. “I want it duly noted that I’m trusting the smell of this, not you.”_

_“Whatever it takes,” Ren says. He takes a bite of his own sandwich, then opens the sack. He shakes out half its crisp blue contents onto a napkin in front of him, watching Hux under his eyelids._

_Resigned and past pickiness, Hux lifts the sandwich and takes a bite. He shuts his eyes, savoring it, as soon as he realizes it’s...actually good. The leaves have a tang to them, and the sauce is mildly sweet. The meat itself is the highlight, clearly flame-roasted and seasoned within one degree of spiciness._

_Hux opens his eyes to Ren’s smirk. “Not bad, right?”_

_“Not at all,” Hux replies, and goes at the rest of it._

_Ren just watches him, crunching at his zuchii, with something like a smile in his eyes._

_“Weren’t you going to brief me?” Hux prompts, after swallowing a second, bigger bite._

_“Is now a suitable time for it?” Ren sounds almost teasing._

_Hux gestures with the sandwich-half (already more like a sandwich-quarter). “I appear to be taking a break.”_

_Ren launches into a narrative of the day--figures on bombs detected and civilians persuaded to aid the Order, details on two government officials executed--between leisurely bites of his own half and the crunch of zuchii._

_Hux’s own sandwich is gone too soon, and he’s watching Ren eat, following his hand to his mouth. Halfway through Ren’s account of finding the first pipe bomb, Hux reaches across the table to try the zuchii._

_Ren smirks again, but doesn’t stop talking. The zuchii’s good too, and Hux’s hand returns for more without Ren’s explicit permission. Ren makes a shooing motion at the sack of crisps and napkin, and the Force pushes them into the center of the table, easily accessible to them both._

_As Ren wends his way through a rigged building, he pauses eating to pull out his datapad and show the holos the intel unit took. The zuchii disappear all the same, and Hux listens, mostly, until his hand meets empty air inside the sack, and Ren’s largely-untouched sandwich, dripping onto a napkin, starts to draw his gaze._

_“The perpetrator was on the top floor,” Ren explains. “There’s no holo of it, but I took care of him. He was local, no evidence of any Resistance affiliation. I didn’t--” He stops and his lips curve upward, gaze falling to his half of the sandwich, then back up to Hux. “When did you last eat?”_

_“I had a ration bar first thing this morning,” Hux replies, almost defensively. “Since then I haven’t had--”_

_Ren interrupts him with a scoff, shaking his head. He flicks his wrist, and the rest of the sandwich scoots around the empty zuchii bag and over to Hux. He makes a_ go _-_ ahead _sort of gesture, not unlike the shooing._

_“As I was saying,” Ren continues, amusement and something unmistakably like fondness lingering in his eyes, “I decided he wasn’t worth interrogating.”_

_Under normal circumstances, Hux might disagree, upbraid him for his carelessness. At the moment, though, he just wipes his fingers and lets Ren keep talking, too content to ruin this._

 

Hux rubs watering eyes to read the chrono, blinking back the sentiment in which he shouldn’t have let himself indulge. The blue digits read 1451.

The afternoon drags on, minutes marked by the flicker of the changing chrono and the click of the wardens’ boots.

At 1730, they bring tang-root with the rice, not the purple vegetable Hux was craving.

That night, Hux dreams of Ren ( _of straddling Ren, Ren deep inside him--the arc of his body and the slide of his cock; of feeling satisfied, or perhaps merely full_ ). He wakes up abruptly, to soiled sheets.

 

* * *

 

After a few days, Hux decides it’s been long enough, and starts halving the item he allows himself. Standing up brings a wave of nausea, so he avoids it.

He sleeps as much as possible, as much as his dreams allow. They alternate guilt-ridden fantasies of gastronomic indulgence, and _Ren_ , always naked. Neither sort is ever enough.

 

* * *

 

A week into the half-item regimen, Hux is sitting up on the cot, both blankets pulled around his shoulders, knees pulled to his chest, when the guards come. He has no idea how long it’s been since he ran out of pages, and he thinks the only meal he’s been served yet today was breakfast. His shoulder blades dig into the wall behind him, the thin pillow too short to support his entire back.

They call his number, and he lolls his head forward, the word _visitor_ slowly registering in the gray fog of his mind. Some part of him is shocked; some more distant part, relieved at the prospect of an excursion from his cell. Light-years away, he knows it’s Rey, and is glad, though there’s nothing she can do for him. Why come back after all this time?

Perhaps Ren’s started haunting her again, despite her shutting him out. (Perhaps he misses Hux, though he hardly knew him in Chaos.)  


At that prospect, Hux scrambles to his feet--too quickly. His vision tunnels as blood drains from his head, his limbs tingling with cold, heavy and light all at once. He stands stock-still as he regains his equilibrium, but the guards are still all but holding him up as they escort him from his cell to Private Conference Two. He keeps his head bowed for the entire walk, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. He won’t stumble. Not now.

Once they arrive, the familiar doors whir open, and Rey looks up from the table, dark gaze flicking up and down Hux’s form. Her lips part, and even from the doorway, Hux sees her visibly swallow. It must be at the razor edges of his cheekbones above the scruff, the deep contour of his clavicle, his gaunt arms, and how baggy the trousers look, barely clinging to his legs.

She looks on in silence as the wardens seat him, and releases the binders as soon as they’ve left. She still says nothing, even after, so Hux takes her in. _She_ looks none the worse for wear--her coloring is better, her eyes are bright, and her loose hair is unchanged, though perhaps a few centimeters longer.

The only notable difference is the ring on her right hand: silver band, dazzling deep-blue stone. Hux looks at it pointedly, then meets her eyes. She schools her face at the contact, as if the thought of the ring delights her, but she can show none of that in Hux’s presence.

“This is new,” Hux says, indicating it.

“Yes, it is.”

Hux doesn’t quite congratulate her. “Who’s the lucky partner?” he asks, though he has a guess. It isn’t half-bad, having something to process besides hunger and Ren.

Rey tilts her head to one side, pursing her lips before answering. “You know him better as—“

“FN—“ Hux starts, then cuts himself off. His etiquette’s showing. “Finn.”

“That’s him.” Rey beams like she can’t help it, and her eyes light up. She colors, just a bit, then purses her lips, apparently attempting decorum. She just looks like she’s holding in a belly laugh.

Hux hopes that, at least once in all their meetings, he’s looked like that while talking about Ren, like he’s the one person around whom the galaxy spins, the mere thought of him like a hard-won sunrise. Ren deserves that much.

Hux clears his throat. “I’m sure you’ll make each other very happy.”

Rey smiles softly, the corners of her mouth curving upward, dimpling her chin. “We do.”

“And yet you’re here?” Hux doesn’t start off intending the inflection, but his voice ticks up all the same, affecting curiosity more than suspicion. It’s fine. He’s tired.

“Well yeah,” Rey says. “Looking at you, maybe I should have come sooner.”

“I suppose I didn’t need your help to kill myself after all.”

Rey hisses a sharp intake of breath, then straightens against the back of her chair. “They won’t let you do this. They’ll take you to the infirmary, just like last time.”

Hux wants to argue that they won’t, that his plan precludes untimely intervention--he’s eroding himself to nothing under the Republic’s nose, not going out in the spectacular dramatics of an absolute fast.

If he wants to succeed, Rey’s the last person to whom he should disclose this. Besides, something quicker is always worth a shot.

“Have you brought my knife then?”

“No,” Rey says, too quickly, vehement, then sobers into something sage-like. “No,” she repeats, “I-- I still need your help.”

Beneath a sudden, sharp hunger pang, a knot of anticipation curls in Hux’s stomach. “Have you been seeing him again?”

Rey nods, and Hux’s pulse ticks up. “I really thought this was over,” she goes on, “but it’s like he’s...reaching out to me.”

“How is he?”

“It’s Chaos, Armitage.”

Hux knows this. He knows Ren won’t be well in Chaos, knows it’s a dangerous question to ask. But he can’t wrap his mouth around _Did he ask for me?_ (Does he need me?) (Am I failing him still?)

Rey thins her lips, and whether she’s reading the unspoken questions in Hux’s thoughts or his face, it doesn’t matter. “I haven’t gotten much out of him,” she says, then pauses for a moment. “But there is something strange. He hasn’t...moved.”

“Hasn’t _moved_?”

The word _catatonia_ slips unbidden into Hux’s thoughts. It might just be the brain fog of hunger, but it sends a wave of lightheadedness and nausea over him. It’s horrifying.

“Hasn’t changed locations, I should say.” Rey traces a finger over the tabletop without breaking eye contact. “I’ve seen him at least once a week for the past two months, and every time, he’s in some version of Chaos that looks like Starkiller Base.”

The nausea simply worsens at _Starkiller_. That should be Hux’s hell, not Ren’s, shouldn’t it?

“You mean an ice world?” Hux qualifies.

“I mean the day we destroyed your genocide machine.”

Hux is too tired to correct her with rhetoric. “But why--” he starts, but breaks off before, _send him to the second-worst day of_ my _life?_

A dark whisper in the back of Hux’s mind stops him: _his father._ And it spirals.

His defeat and his fresh scar and his spread-eagled form, bleeding into the snow.

The burning sky and the splitting earth and the charcoal stench of failure on the air.

“I’ve never been able to figure out how or why the appearance of his surroundings changes, but it’s...pretty weird that they haven’t in so long,” Rey’s saying. “It’s been different almost every time before this, and I--” She stops to clear her throat, but doesn’t continue once she’s done.

“You what?” Hux prompts. “Do you want to send me to talk to him? I’d be happy to.” He extends his hand, and she’d better take it.

But she just shakes her head. “Before I _saw you_ , I was going to ask you for your memory of that day, to see if there’s any reason why he’s stuck there, and why he keeps reaching out to me from there. I mean, I beat him there, I don’t know why he…” She appears to correct her train of thought. “But I don’t think you’re in any condition to deal with the Force when you’re...” She f alls silent again, letting _half-dead_ sink between them, understood.

“I can do it,” Hux replies, all but automatically, in the event their agreement still stands. In the hope that someday, she’ll let him end this.

But Rey balances both hands on the edge of the table, as if to push herself up to leave. “Armitage, I really don’t think--”

“Let me try,” Hux insists, a wild edge to his own voice that he doesn’t recognize. “I can handle it. I’ve won battles in worse condition than this.” He doesn’t mention that they were sims at the Academy, in his adolescent illness.

Rey lowers her hands and purses her lips, considering.

It’s suddenly very important that this happen today, that Hux make more progress toward Rey’s incentive. He’d nearly dismissed it, but now that it’s returned to his calculations, he knows it’s his most efficient ticket out of here.

“What will it hurt?” he presses. “If I pass out, all you’ll have to do is call the infirmary. They’ll nurse me back to health, and I’ll be no worse off than where you left me.” It’s a gamble, but he’s been too bored to weigh the risks.

Rey sits quietly for a few moments, studying him, then her hands. Finally, she looks back up, takes a long, slow inhale, and exhales just as gradually.

“Alright,” she says. “Alright, but we’ll make it quick.”

Hux hasn’t withdrawn his hand, and he smiles faintly as Rey wraps her fingers around it, warm where his own skin is cold and bloodless, paper-white and paper-thin over the knobbly bones.

“Go on,” she murmurs.

Hux closes his eyes, and falls into a maelstrom.

.

 

.

Out the viewport of the _Upsilon_ -class, Starkiller has acquired a new schematic: a network of space-black, ever-widening gullies; orange nodes of bombed-out warehouses; the crumbled wreck of the command center on Precinct 47. A smoking crater dominates the center of the platform from which Hux had watched the launch, and the Order banner is in tatters--Hux had turned his head as they passed it.

(Not that that helped. He can’t stop seeing it, and he’s sure he’ll see it for the rest of his life, if he lives much longer than his planet does. If they can find fucking _Ren_ before Hux goes up in flame with the last decade’s work.)

Now, over one of the strips of evergreen forest remaining in the base’s central division, Hux stares blankly ahead, at the unnatural twilight-blue of the sky, still rent sporadically by the flare of a bombardment.

It’s the trill of his datapad, tracker application lying open on the console for the pilots’ reference, that forces his gaze back to earth.

“General,” the pilot says, turning, “we’ve found--”

“Yes,” Hux snaps, hardly hearing her or himself.

His heart drops to his stomach, vision blurs black around the edges, when Ren comes into view, a dark form sprawled amid the shadows of the riven forest. Prone. Motionless.

Snoke failed to mention this. Ren was supposed to be missing in action, not a fucking casualty

“Put it down.” He sounds distant in his own ears, like someone talking underwater.

The shuttle pitches downward, lands roughly as another tremor grips the ground. He nearly stumbles off the gangplank.

It’s awful outside. The air stinks of ash and burning fuel cells. The ground vibrates with the constant peal of aftershocks.

_This is Starkiller. This was supposed to be your legacy._

Hux bites his lip and tamps down the thought. _Ren._ (The one thing he can salvage here.)

He shields his eyes against the snow and ash eddying through the air and surveys the ground, struggling for his bearings. From the air, Ren was right here. He should be--

“Orders, General?”

Behind Hux, the troopers have disembarked. They’re waiting on him where they should be following him, should have already located Ren, and that’s--

That’s how it happened.

The ground roils with a fresh blow, and a red flash like heat lightning appears on the horizon.

Hux’s brain feels split in two, like it did in the broken memory of the desert on Hays Major, when the camplights had disappeared, not gotten closer.

“General?”

But the troopers are still here, and maybe he’s misremembered the whole thing. Maybe this _is_ what really happened--and everything about finding Ren first, covering him with his coat, trying to diagnose him--is fabrication.

Or maybe he’s just dreaming.

“Sir?” The trooper prods, and it’s bordering impropriety, the way she keeps prompting him.

“Fan out and find him,” Hux orders over the wind. “And someone return to the ship for a stretcher,” he adds. His teeth are chattering, and it isn’t from the cold.

The troopers split off in pairs, but Hux goes alone, turning left and away from the spot where they saw Ren from the shuttle. He breathes in deeply, but only inhales smoke and the dust of freshly-cut gullies.

His lungs immediately reject it. He doubles over, coughing and spluttering, splays a hand against the nearest tree trunk to steady himself through the fit and another tremor of the ground. He doesn’t look up until both have passed.

He keeps walking, boots crunching faintly between distant sonic booms and the roar of the dying planet. _It didn’t happen like this._ He ran toward Ren, not away, but he can’t bring himself to turn back that way when everything is wrong.

He realizes vaguely that he’s heading back toward the Precinct 47 headquarters building, though he certainly won’t find Ren _there_ (just smoking warehouses, tattered banners, and the crumbled wreck of the command center). He’s just trying to collect his thoughts, set this memory back on track, but he can’t bring himself to turn back around. He’s freezing cold.

The throes of the earth become more pronounced, and he stops periodically, huddling against tree trunks to stay vertical. He’s paused, bare hand splayed across damp and peeling bark, when he catches a dark blur of motion in his periphery.

Must be a falling branch. He waits for the crash.

There is none.

Instead, there’s the undetectable crunch of footsteps on the snow. He turns fully, the wind catching under his baggy prison uniform.

The prison uniform he shouldn’t be wearing. It was his coat and fatigues in the memory, he certainly wasn’t wearing this, this isn’t right, he’s lost his mind, he--

He looks up, and between the two trunks in front of him is the shadow he’d know anywhere. Coming toward him.

“Ren?”

And this is all wrong.

Ren’s supposed to be bleeding out half a kilometer from here, not walking around in full robes with his scar half-healed. Certainly not all but jogging toward Hux and stopping short in front of him.

“Hux,” he breathes, and there’s something unmistakably delighted in his tone and his eyes, “you’re here.” His hand twitches at his side, like he’s about to reach toward Hux, but thinks better of it.

“Of course I’m here, Ren. This is my memory.”

Unsurprisingly, Ren ignores him. “It worked,”  he says, still sounding incongruently buzzed. “I’ve been trying to get through to you since I wound up on Starkiller. I can’t believe--”

“This is Chaos,” Hux cuts him off. Not a question, though it should be. The memory must have bled into reality again.

“Obviously.” Ren’s brow furrows.

“And you know me.”

“I’d always know you,” Ren says. “I told you that when I saw you at the Temple, and I meant to when I realized it was you in the throne room. I wanted--”

Hux’s pulse hammers in his ears, and he interrupts again, which Ren deserves. “You did know me, then.”

“Yeah--” Ren’s hand twitches again, but he doesn’t try anything. It’s infuriating, but Hux can’t close the gap himself. He’s got his arms folded, still chafing at the bare skin. “--I’ve been trying to reach out to you since then, like I said.”

_The dreams._ The dreams have gotten so much worse, and Hux thought it was just the product of malnutrition. What if--

But no.

“Rey told me you were reaching out to her.”

“I kept _reaching_ her,” Ren corrects. “I guess it was easy for the connections to get tangled from here.”

Hux snorts. “Chaos does seem to have a signal jamming effect.”

“Not just Chaos. Starkiller. It’s a strong place. I--” Ren stops himself, glances down, then meets Hux’s eyes again. “I mean, Rey… did what she did here, and then you-- came back for me.”

“On Snoke’s orders,” Hux points out, and hates himself by the third syllable.

“I know.” Ren purses his lips for a moment, and they look so red in the bluish dusk. “That didn’t change how it felt.”

He says it almost defiantly, not quite meeting Hux’s eyes. As if asking the Force itself why put him here, when apparently Hux’s fear-borne obedience to Snoke had cured his loneliness almost as soon as it set in. (He’d clutched so feebly at Hux’s hand, had settled under the warm weight of Hux’s shed coat. It had been obvious this meant something.)

(At least to him.)

Hux pushes past the memory. It had been horrible at the time. He’d babbled clinical nonsense about hypovolemia and hypothermia because he couldn’t process the fact that Ren’s blood was melting the snow under his boots, and Ren’s skin was fucking _gray_. And that he’d cared about Ren, once, and Ren was dying before his eyes.

He rubs his bare arms, then reaches up to brush a damp lock of hair out of his eyes. “So why did you bring me here?”

“I didn’t bring you here. I found you here,” Ren says. “Our bond must have just done this.”

_Our bond._ Hux’s teeth are chattering too hard to make the effort to repeat it back, but _of course._ He didn’t feel the vibrating chord this time, but there must be a name for it. This is the name. The same thing Ren has with Rey. That Snoke engineered, where this one must have...spontaneously generated.

The thought should warm Hux from the inside, but he’s too cold to entertain it deeply. He’s

still collecting his thoughts when Ren speaks up again.

“I wanted to apologize. For what happened at the Temple. It wasn’t supposed to go like that, I--” He stops suddenly. His gaze falls out of focus and darts between the trees behind Hux, entirely missing his face. “Hux?”

“I’m--” Hux grits his teeth, stilling them. “I’m right here, Ren.”

“I can’t see you.” His voice has pitched upward, gaze grown frantic. “I can’t see you.”

“I’m here, Ren, I swear I--”

Snow blows into his face, curtaining him off from Ren, and the ground shakes again. He closes his eyes against it, heedless of his surroundings.

He doesn’t open them again, even as he realizes he’s falling, even as the cold and stench of Starkiller fade into a hazy blackness, heavy on his eyelids. He blinks them open for a second, finds himself staring at a white ceiling, though it’s fuzzy and gray at the edges. The back of his head aches.

There’s a woman kneeling over him, young, worried and angry at once. _Rey._

“Armitage?” Her voice sounds sluggish and muzzy, like a transmission slowed down for replay. “I thought you said you could do it.”

_I did,_ he wants to scream. _I did do it, and he was there._

He can manage nothing, though, before the darkness takes over again.

 

* * *

 

Hux hasn’t been on a water-speeder in three decades, since Arkanis and his father’s psychological exercise in nerfs versus sea-monsters. (The nerfs lost--they couldn’t swim, and every prepubescent cadet on the speeder learned that that was the way of the galaxy.) The boat he’s on now is smaller, emptier, maybe eight meters long and four wide, narrow plast deck slick under his boots.

The Commandant had picked a rare mild day--it was summer, and past the end of monsoon season--for the excursion, so Hux has only seen choppy water from a distance. The condition of the sea around him now defies a term so tame.

Dark waves suck at the speeder’s hull, and the occasional crest buffets it, spraying saltwater across the deck and into Hux’s face, tossing him against the railing behind him. A fresh onslaught sets him blinking and gasping. It jostles the container in his hands.

_The urn._

He knows it with a sudden knife’s-edge clarity. Ren’s urn. He’s here to scatter him to the thing most like him in the natural world. The ocean is volatile, invaluable, beautiful, and replete with monsters, creatures of nightmare lurking all too near the surface. It’s appropriate.

But now the natural world won’t even allow him this. Another, higher wave surges over the opposite railing, and slams Hux against the one behind him again. He grips the urn until his joints ache. Water soaks the deck, seeping toward him.

He’s gasping for breath, and it’s time. It’s fucking _time,_ and he needs to do this, no matter what he’s seen in Chaos, to no avail. Ren deserves this much rest. Hux deserves this much closure.

Keeping a talon’s hold on the slippery black duraluminum of the urn, he removes the lid. He’s halfway turned to look over the railing and out to sea, rather than across the deck, when the next crests hits. It jolts him, and his ribcage hits the railing, knocking the wind from his lungs and the lid from his hand and onto the deck behind him.

“Shit,” he breathes. He steadies himself and turns back, making to bend to collect the lid.

A drop of water hits the tip of his nose as he half-stumbles forward. He dismisses it as seawater until the next falls, and the next, and this is unmistakably a fine drizzle, spattering down from the dull white sky.

The ashes are going to get soaked. He’s got to get the damn lid, or else they’ll be wet and stick to the sides of the urn, and then what will he have bothered to come out here for.

He splays his fingers across the dark mouth of the urn and hunches over it to protect it. He’s halfway into a crouch on the deck. A wave strikes the speeder, and he instinctively braces himself against the railing again.

Too fast.

The urn’s smooth sides are thoroughly slick now, and it starts to slip out of his equally slick palm, as if in slow motion.

In the split second before it leaves his hand, he pictures what will happen next: it’ll clatter to the deck, and the contents will spill. There’ll be a mound of fine gray dust at his feet, rapidly darkening as seawater saturates it, fixes it to the deck.

But it doesn’t fall.

There’s a pair of hands covering his own--covering them _entirely_ \--warm and dry where Hux is freezing and soaked to the skin. He’d know the span of them anywhere.

Hux glances up to meet Ren’s gaze, dark and flat under the gray sky. His hair is as dry as his skin, as if he can’t feel the rain. As if Hux and his own urn are all he _can_ feel.

“Careful.”

His lip quirks upward, unbearably, and Hux wants to kiss it or slap it, or at least offer a sarcastic response. But when he opens his mouth, any coherent thought he had is drowned out by a sudden loud beep or chime, accompanied by a flash of lightning.

_What is that_ , he tries to say, but his mouth is dry and his tongue feels over-large, clinging to the roof of his mouth like a particularly mealy ration bar.

There’s another flash, another shrill beep. As if there’s a bomb on board.

His training shoots a jolt of adrenaline through him at the revelation, even though he knows it doesn’t matter. Better immolation in an explosion than drowning in a shipwreck. But Ren.

_We’re in danger,_ he wants to say, but there’s nowhere to go. He doesn’t even know how Ren got here.

A wave hits the side of the ship, in perfect rhythm with another bolt of lightning, another chime.

Visibly, Ren’s hands tighten on top of his, knuckles going taut, but he feels no difference in pressure.

They’re going to drown out here, but he hopes the bomb takes them first. Better instant immolation than slowly drowning, while the monsters circle.

Another flash. Another beep.

A beep.

.

 

.

A beep, and his eyes jolt open to a white surface that is neither the hypothermic tint of Starkiller’s darkening landscape, nor the ugly flat blankness of the sky above the sea, nor the muted lampdisk of his cell’s ceiling. It has a bright, inorganic glare to it. It feels like a spotlight.

He lifts a hand to shield his eyes from it, but finds resistance on the other end. He can still manage it, but he’s tethered to something. A glance down at his body shows what: A too-big needle protrudes from the crook of his right arm, and two corded electrodes cling to his chest, attached to a monitor.

Which beeps.

He closes his eyes again. He exhales.

The infirmary.

Of fucking course.

He’s effectively pinned into a railed bed. Somebody put a gray medical shift on him, and a thin white blanket covers him from the waist down. It’s cold in here and far too bright.

He hasn’t looked further than the IV on his right when he’s interrupted.

“Zero Six One Nine Nine.”

The voice grates with the distinctive guttural accent of a mammal with only slits for nostrils. The Abednedo protocol officer.

Hux looks up to confirm it anyway. The creature peers at him down an elongated snout. The two tendrils dangling from the sides of it whip as the Abednedo studies Hux’s form, twisting its head.

“Where’s my feeding tube?” Hux tries for sarcasm, but his own voice is feeble, weak and raspy from disuse.

The officer doesn’t miss a beat. “It should be put in the day after tomorrow. The medics were waiting to make sure you’d wake up first. Didn’t want to exert the effort if you were too far gone.”

“Fair enough,” Hux manages.

A part of him registers that he should be elated. He got _this close_ to dead, right under their noses. It’s almost a victory, or it would be, if it had worked. If his hands, now that he notices, still didn’t feel warm where he dreamed Ren was holding them.

“‘Fair enough?’” The Abednedo takes a step closer to his bedside. It takes more effort than it should not flinch back against the mattress. (But this is the Republic, and no one can hurt him, even if they wanted to.) “You protested this last time. You didn’t want it.”

As if Hux needs the reminder.

“I don’t,” he says, and means it. He imagines the burn of it, snaking down his throat.

“Then I guess you’ll have to go back to eating like the rest of us. Thank the Force you don’t get a pass out of here.”

Hux knows, but his gaze still strays to the blaster at the officer’s hip. He’s carrying the real thing, unlike the regular wardens’ stun guns. Apparently that’s what you get for being higher up the food chain, and dealing exclusively with the New Republic’s most dangerous prisoners.

All he’d have to do would be to make a move, jump the bedrail, swing a fist at the creature’s snout. The Abednedo would draw--would _fire_ \--on instinct, and it would be over. He could just--

But Hux’s hands are warm, and he isn’t sure.

He stalls instead.

“‘Thank the Force,’” he echoes, and the frailty of his voice tempers some of the sarcasm. “Because you enjoy this so much.”

The Abednedo actually snorts at that, though it sounds like a sneeze, given the shape of their nostrils. “I do, you know.” They bend lower over the bed, dropping their tone an octave. “In fact, I can’t think of a better way to spend my career than enforcing your sentence. Keeping you as miserable as legally permissible, for as long as physically possible.”

There’s something unbearably like a sneer on the officer’s tapered face. They run a finger down the barrel of its blaster, the almost-reptilian crags of their skin in sharp contrast to the sleek metal. The subconscious threat in the motion ignites Hux’s bloodstream.

Ren took out whole villages of these creatures without so much as backup. This thing is _nothing at all_ , barely sentient, half-evolved, and it’s standing here fucking _gloating_ over the fact that he’s still alive.

He could jump the bedrail, but why wait to be shot? He could grab the Abednedo’s gun and shoot it on either side of the chest (once for each heart) then fit the muzzle into his own mouth and fire.

If Ren were here, he could wrest away the blaster with a thought. He could-- _Idiot._ If Ren were here, there would be no _here_.

That thought sobers him slightly, but not enough to strip the acid from his response.

“So I’m to expect you won’t be promoted?”

“Oh, I don’t want to be promoted, _Zero Six One Nine Nine_.” There’s unmistakable mockery in the emphasis, but it’s gone in an instant, replaced by something husky, chest-deep. “My kids were on Cordota.”

And apparently Hux himself has killed at least one group of these creatures, from lightyears away, with a word. He has no condolences to offer. Certainly no apologies.

_And my partner offed himself and left me to rot in prison_ , is all he wants to say. _Welcome to war._

But that would accomplish no more than would the false penitence. Neither would satisfy the Abednedo. Grief doesn’t work like that.

Hux scoffs. “Let me know when force-feeding me brings them back.”

“I can’t get them back.” The officer straightens somewhat, takes their hand off their blaster. “But I can make damn sure you think about them.”

Hux has to stifle a laugh. Dry and brittle, mirthless. Yet entirely authentic.

He only thinks about Ren, and it’s hilarious that these people think they can make him sorry for anything besides not tugging Ren beside him into a double-wide escape pod.  

Hux manages to conceal the laugh as a coughing fit, and the Abednedo has stood back to their full height by the time he’s running out of breath.

The Abednedo makes a guttural noise that must be clearing their throat, then lifts a datapad from their side and bends, tapping at it. Professional again, not futilely vengeful.

“They’ll start you on a liquid diet tonight, if you’d rather have that than a tube down your throat. Let one of the med droids know.” They squint up from the datapad. “I’ll record your condition as improved.” With that, the officer leaves the room, disappearing into the whiter glare of the hall outside.

Before Hux can think twice about the officer’s kids--poor tragically incinerated Abednedlings--or even lie fully back again, a voice from his left slices through the fuzz of his thoughts.   
  
“Sorry about that asshole. I wanted to wake you up to warn you.”   
  
And there should be no voice from Hux’s left at all, but this one is deep, all drawn out vowels and haphazardly enunciated consonants. Hux doesn’t have to turn his head to know it. For his stomach to flip with something between excitement and horror.   
  
But he turns his head anyway, to make sure he’s just hearing things, and fuck. His mind has finally snapped. This is full psychosis.  
  
Ren himself is standing there, or at least the shape of him is, every detail perfect except for the bluish sheen around his edges. Under the dim chemical lighting, it creates an air of translucence, as if he’s one cooling unit blast from fading into the wall behind him. It shouldn’t be possible for Kylo Ren to look insubstantial.   
  
(This, therefore, cannot be him.)   
  
It must be some lingering effect of the past few weeks--Chaos, the Force and prolonged malnutrition having conspired to shatter Hux’s sanity.   
  
“Hux.” The Ren-thing looks at him intently, and Hux isn’t sure if it’s the lighting or the spectral cast that makes the scar stand out, redder and angrier than it’s been in months. “I know you can see me. Can you hear me?”   
  
Of course Hux can hear it. It’s his own fucking delusion.   
  
But he acknowledges it, anyway   
  
“What is this, Ren.” He might have meant it as a question, but it comes out flat and exasperated. It’d sound peevish if addressed to a real person, but it’s perfectly suitable for new and obnoxious hallucinations.   
  
“What do you mean, ‘what is this.’ I came back as soon as I could.”   
  
“Came back?”   
  
Ren can’t come back. He’s dead.   
  
And hallucinations can’t come and go. They only exist when you see them.   
  
“I’ve been able to stay longer and longer over the past few days.” The image compulsively balls and releases a fist, then tips its chin, breaking eye contact for a moment. “None of the aides can see me, so that helps.”   
  
Leave it to a hallucination of Ren to treat Hux like he’s missed out on something.   
  
“They can’t see you because you’re the product of my imagination,” he shoots back, absurdly.   
  
Hux should go back to sleep. Maybe he’ll dream up a scenario where Ren is less aggravating. Like the strange water speeder nightmare where he was actually helpful, if only to keep his own ashes contained. (Self-serving, certainly, but Hux expects no less.)

Regardless, he can’t close his eyes. He’s riveted to Ren’s figure.

There’s something thrilling in the illusion of seeing him in real life, in the present, even if it’s the doing of Hux’s own mind. And something embarrassing in the notion that his subconscious mind has contrived something as pathetic and saccharine as Ren waiting at his bedside.   
  
Hux half-expects the Ren-thing to laugh at him, at his reply, but it doesn’t.

The full lips compress into a thin line; the dark eyes (no nuance to their color in this light) fall to Hux’s bed. Ren’s gaze wanders from the disconnected intravenous port jutting from the back of Hux’s hand, to his sharp elbows, to his face.   
  
“I’m not,” he says simply, with a defensive sharpness. “I’m not just in your head.”   
  
Technically speaking, Hux hasn’t seen Ren outside his head in over six months. But it’s never been like this.

“When last I saw you--and not in a dream, I mean--you were wandering around some part of Chaos that looked like Starkiller, and told me—“ Hux stops abruptly, remembering. Fuck. This simply cannot be and yet—  
  
For a moment, Ren’s lip quirks smugly upward. “I told you I’d been reaching out to you.”

He isn’t real. He can’t be. Rey isn’t here to connect them, and Chaos seems unlikely to surrender anyone so easily.

Hux shakes his head, forces himself to shut his eyes for a moment. Just to blink, clear his mind. When he opens them, this will be gone.

But there’s no peace waiting for him behind his eyelids. In the sudden absence of visual distractions, he catches it: the low plucked chord, humming softly, like an electric current in the back of his throat.

“I’m still here,” Ren says, more gently than he has any right to.

The note thrums, and Rey never had anything to do with it, and Ren’s voice sounds so real, and Hux can _feel_ him, in the usual oblique way. Faint and less warm than usual, but settling into his bones like a superior marrow. Holding him together.

Hux opens his eyes, and Ren has taken a step closer to the bed, one diaphanous hand resting on the railing, mere centimeters above Hux’s arm. There are a thousand things to ask: _how_ and _since when_ and _why did it take so long_. But Ren’s talking again before Hux can formulate even one of them.

“I’ve been in and out for three days.” He meets Hux’s eyes while his fingers work silently over the railing. “Like I said, I can’t stay more than a few hours on end, but I’ve been coming as often as I can. The medics, they...weren’t optimistic. They kept saying you were pretty far gone.”

“Thank you for that,” Hux snaps back, because Ren never fails to bring out something petulant in him. Ren deserves it. It was their connection in Chaos that put him here.

Ren bites his lip, and his knuckles whiten briefly, fingers clenching around the railing. “They’ve been treating you for malnutrition, not Force-induced trauma. You would’ve been fine if you weren’t trying to kill yourself.”

He’s one to fucking talk.

“Forgive me, I should have fully anticipated your attempts to break my brain.” Hux regrets the vitriol before he’s even done speaking, even more so once the irritation drains from Ren’s face, expression softening into something sorrowful. Frightened.

“I thought I had. I thought I’d finally gotten through to you, just to lose you again. I couldn’t have stood that, Hux. I--” He’s breaking off, voice thickening with emotion. “I didn’t want--”

“I know,” Hux interrupts, and reaches up to cover Ren’s hand.

He feels nothing but rail.

“What the hell.” He can see his own hand in the middle of Ren’s, channels of blue light running between his fingers, where his flesh-and-blood hand interrupts Ren’s apparently projected one.

“I’m still working on this part,” Ren says, sounding as apologetic as Ren can. “The physical presence and tactile aspect.” He moves his hand from under Hux’s, but instead of sliding it out, slides it _through_ , vertically. For a moment, his fingers look detached from his palm, bleeding blue.

Fortunately, Hux has been on a glucose drip. There’s nothing in his stomach to vomit up.

“Please don’t do that.”

It’s bad enough he can’t kiss him--Hux certainly isn’t about to watch Ren transcend more laws of physics than are strictly necessary.

Hux drops his hand from the rail, and Ren’s falls back to his side. It aches. He’s _right here_ , and there’s an insurmountable wall between them. (But when has there not been?)

“I hate it too,” Ren says, after a moment. “I’d do better with this technique if I could.”

The resigned self-loathing in his tone is nothing new, but it stings to hear. _For fuck’s sake, the last thing he needs right now is your criticism._ Suddenly cold, Hux works his right hand into the knit coverlet, blanking on words of consolation.

_(Careful, he might leave you.)_

Falling back on habit, he changes the subject.

“What technique?”

“It’s a Sith practice.” Ren relaxes slightly. Perhaps letting him ramble about his abilities is still a viable comfort, after all. “Anchoring yourself to something in the physical world to avoid Chaos or oblivion after death. I didn’t have much choice about Chaos, but--”

“You aren’t Sith,” Hux points out, more prompting than actual skepticism. Hux would believe anything, at this point. (That’s terrifying.)

“And you weren’t the Empire, but you improved on their strategies.”

It’s a concession, and fair enough. He won’t remark on it. Best not to beat the rotting carcass of the Order’s military policies.

“So what is that you’re anchored to?” he asks after a moment.

“You.”

Hux couldn’t answer that if he tried. He can’t wrap his mind around the logistics of it any more than he can handle the catch in Ren’s throat, or the way he reaches over the rail again as if on instinct. How he runs his immaterial fingers over a loose lock of hair clinging to Hux’s cheek, as if to tuck it behind his ear.

Hux feels nothing, and the hair doesn’t move, and how many other times has Ren done this over the past few days, like it’s some futile habit that he can’t break.

It’s so pitiful--and moreover, so damn _frustrating_ \--that Hux’s own eyes prickle. He wants to chide Ren not to do that again (it’s too much), but the words stick to his tongue.

Ren draws back on his own, though, which is somehow worse.

“Technically speaking, I’m anchored to our connection in the Force, but drawing on your side of it. The Living Force is still with you, while I’m…” Ren falters for a moment, which isn’t promising. “...part of the Cosmic Force.”

“Because you’re dead,” Hux clarifies.

“Yeah.” Ren purses his lips and looks down. He looks less solid than he did, at once paler and bluer. And he said--

He said he typically can’t stay long.

Hux presses, sensing the urgency of the conversation. “But you said you’ve been strengthening it--our _bond_ , I mean--in other ways, yes?”

“I’m here,” Ren says, with an air of shrugging, though he doesn’t move. He sounds slightly faint.

“Not for much longer, though.”

Ren shakes his head. “I’ll come back as soon as I can handle it.”

Even his voice sounds distant, and he looks like a holo on a bad projector. The signal’s strong, but the image is weak.

“Thank you,” Hux says, and reaches for his hand on impulse. It won’t do any good, but it’s better than not even pretending.

Ren reciprocates, curling his fingers to accommodate the shape of Hux’s hand, thumb on the palm. Hux holds his own in mid-air, imagines it’s just numb. That the problem is his nervous system, not the laws pinning the universe together.

Ren passes his thumb over the taped-down IV port slowly, almost reverently, over and over again. Hux watches until the shape of him fades.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: Hux relapses into the self-starvation referenced in the first chapter of this fic. No numbers are mentioned, but the following are described in detail: visible weight loss, physical malnutrition symptoms, food-related rules, mealtime rituals and compulsions.


	11. This Crude Matter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, see the endnotes for chapter-specific content warnings.

“Prisoner Zero Six One Nine Nine,” the med droid reports, “your vital signs have improved significantly.” The one of the little units three arm-hinges creaks as it lifts its scanner from Hux’s forehead and turns to the line graphs and figures decorating the monitor to the right of his bed.

It’s 0930 by the chrono beside the window. Yellow autumn light filters into the room between half-turned blinds, throwing slatted sunbeams across the linoliplast flooring and the foot of the bed. The droid moves in and out of it.

“Good news,” Hux tells the droid, mildly. It’s more responsive than he’s usually been with the thing, but hopefully it won’t register his mood as _suspiciously good_.

“Indeed.” The droid takes a fresh nutrient pouch from the hovercart beside it and begins to swap it out for the one currently tethering Hux to the IV stand. “I will recommend to your physician that you start on solid food as soon as possible, as you’ve managed to avoid the nasogastric tube.”

Hux’s gut tightens at the thought of food, either out of hunger or anxiety. He tamps down the possible nerves with the thought that’s gotten him through the past two days of liquid diet. Every bite of gelatin he’s gagged down, every sip of broth he’s managed, has been for _Ren_. Hux needs his strength if he’s the only thing anchoring Ren to this side of reality.

“How soon do you estimate they’ll have me on solid food?” he asks.

The droid pauses the low hum it’s emanating (it does that sometimes, either a glitch or a misbegotten personality quirk) to study Hux with cloudy optical receptors.

It’s a terribly old and unfamiliar model--definitely older than Hux, possibly even predating the Empire. Gray pocks of poorly restored carbon scoring write _action_ all over its shell. It may be as unused to planetside life as Hux is.

Right now, it’s holding the deflated pouch in one forcep, the fresh one successfully installed. “I will speak with your assigned physician this afternoon. If they concur, you may get a feast for dinner.”

A feast sounds-- both nauseating and beyond appealing. Hux is sure whatever they give him won’t meet that definition. The hyperbole is, perhaps, another glitch.

“Excellent,” he replies, weakly.

The droid’s head swivels back toward its hovercart, and it places the used pouch in a waste compartment on the bottom half of the cart. “May I assist you with anything else, Zero Six One Nine Nine?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Hux says. “Thank you.”

“Then I will see to my next charge.” The droid straightens, pivots its optical receptors toward Hux again, then toward the door.

“Wait,” Hux orders, before it can start moving.

The head swivels back toward him. “Zero Six One Nine Nine?”

“What’s your model number?”

The droid’s neck joints creak, and it’s silent for a solid thirty seconds. Perhaps it’s never been asked that, wasn’t programmed for self-awareness, and has short-circuited. Hux waits. The tiny blue light above its optical receptors is still blinking, at any rate.

Eventually, it comes back online. “I am GH-15, medical analysis unit.”

“Thank you, Geeaych-Fifteen. You’re dismissed.”

“You are not authorized to dismiss me, but I will now continue my rounds.”

The droid lopes out of Hux’s room, leaving the sterile white space painfully empty. Knowing Ren is out there, trying to come back, ought to help with the dismalness of this place, but instead it just feels lonelier in his absence.

He’s been back one time, briefly, since Hux woke up three days ago. He stayed for about fifteen minutes, during which he barely had time to explain that he’d stayed a full thirty-six hours the previous time. It had apparently worn thin both his own essence and the bond allowing him to draw on Hux’s latent Force-presence to manifest.

He was optimistic that he’d fully restored the connection after a break that felt equal to the amount of time he spent on the temporal plane, but quickly became winded and transparent. He stood at the foot of Hux’s bed, all but stock-still the whole time. Apparently movement would have required extra effort.

Stupidly, it hurt not being able to reach out to him--to at least _see_ his skin under Hux’s, whether Hux could feel it or not. But Hux has never asked for such things, and isn’t about to start now, when Ren doesn’t even have skin to speak of.

The slats of sunlight lengthen, move across the room, fade to gold to orange to pink.

They bring him porridge with honey, and he all but licks the bowl clean.

A different droid has cleared his tray when a single crisp knock resounds at the door. It’s a warning, not a request for permission, as it irises open within seconds, admitting Rey. She’s in white, and blends into the room’s sparse decor.

“Hello, Armitage.”

Her voice is gentle, and her footsteps silent as she crosses the floor. She pauses at his bedside, in the shadow of the IV stand, and her gaze roams his body, surely taking in the twiggy lines of his legs under the knit blanket, the sunken hollows of his eyes and cheeks.

“How are you feeling?”

“Much better,” he replies, more stiffly than she deserves. “Thank you.”

She completes her survey and meets his eyes with an air of examining infectious bacteria under a microscope, picking apart each cell to see how it ticks. To determine an antidote.

Of course, Hux should tell her why he’s better. The real reason, not just three days of increased nutrition and sufficient hydration. But she may know already. That may be why she’s here.

But if it is, she doesn’t say so.

“I’m sorry,” is what emerges, earnest but unyielding. “I shouldn’t have even attempted it when you were this weak.”

There’s no reason for her to know the whole truth, but there’s equally little sense in her feeling _guilty_ over the objectively most productive development since her and Hux’s sessions began.

“I did insist I could handle it,” Hux points out. It’s generous of him.

“And I thought I could too,” Rey returns, then briefly purses her lips. “I guess we must have both blacked out at once.”

Oh. _Oh._

So she didn’t see. So it was like the last time he spoke with Ren via their bond alone, in the Temple hell. Nothing on her end, locked out in the dark.

“What was the last thing you saw?” Hux asks.

“When your shuttle landed,” she says. “I think I barely missed the _Falcon_ \--our ship, I mean--in your memory. Didn’t see Kylo.”

Hux just nods, reluctant to lie to a Jedi outright.  

“But you would’ve recovered as fast as I did if you weren’t…” She trails off, surveying his skeleton again. “Why did you do this to yourself again?”

“Why do you _think_ ,” Hux spits back. The vitriol is genuine, loaded with the anger he was too drained to feel after she’d abandoned him. ( _Us_.) No matter if it’s no longer applicable.

“I told you I would be back.”

“Yet you failed to specify precisely when, and guaranteed I’d never see Ren again.” Hux laces his fingers in his lap, those of his right hand spread uncomfortably around the disconnected port. “Of course I…” He falter for a moment. “...lost hope.”

Rey frowns, the soft, gentle look she sometimes gives him, which her principles somehow allow. “And have you got it back now?”

Part of Hux wants to scream _yes_ at the top of his lungs, grab her arm and tell her the whole story. That he’s very nearly got Ren back. That the only issue is the oh-so _trivial_ question of touch.

But it somehow seems wrong to disclose it, now. With Ren back in play, he’s regained his rights to privacy.

Best of all, he and Hux get to operate as a unit again, like it’s always been. It’s a fucked up day when he’s _looking forward_ to asking Kylo Ren for advice, but it isn’t the advice that’s exciting, but the fact of _getting to talk to him_. That’s acceptable.

It feels like slipping back into a pair of worn and comfortable pair of boots, measured to fit in the first place, then trodden into the shape of his sole over years of repeated use. A part of him has conformed around Ren. He hasn’t felt whole in months. (Still doesn’t, not quite, but he’s closer.)

“I don’t know,” he replies.

“I heard you were eating again,” Rey offers, after a moment. She’s standing over him--looking down at him--but there’s no guest chair in the room, even if she wanted to sit. “That’s something.”

“I don’t want the tube.”

It’s true. It would’ve been true even without Ren in play (even though Ren doesn’t need to see tubing taped across his cheek or a port running out his nose, not when the IV and the visible bones are revolting enough).

It would’ve been true because the tube is relinquishing control. Admitting humiliation and defeat. That, he can’t do.

Rey sighs. “Whatever it takes.”

And Hux could harangue her, insult her, ask her on instinct what the fuck she thinks he has to live for.

But it wouldn’t be worth the effort, not now, when there actually is something worth waking up for again. (He doesn’t trust himself not to spill the truth. He’d be exuberant.)

He can’t think of anything to say to her that wouldn’t betray Ren, re-expose what they have. He stares past her to the chrono behind her, examining the half-closed slats of a ceiling vent.  It’s cold in here, and the cooling unit emits a monotonous hum. Hux waits.

“I’m sure he wouldn’t want this,” Rey says, finally. “You destroying yourself.”

Hux’s response comes far too easily. “But he did leave me to it.”

It doesn’t match the relief he felt at the sound of Ren’s voice, or the way he wants to drink in Ren’s face, blue edges and all. It’s there, though, apparently.

Rey hesitates, looks down, then places one hand on the bedrail. Her fingers are solid there, and the faint slap of the impact aches in the back of Hux’s mind, where Ren passed right through the same impenetrable metal.

“You’ve made it this far,” she says.

And there’s that softness in her tone that confirms what Hux has always suspected. Namely, that she’s a liar and a coward.

“You wouldn’t have--” And _fuck,_ he immediately corrects himself, “You aren’t going to bring me the knife, are you? You never were.”

She drums her fingers against the rail. “I thought I could, in the beginning.”

“And I changed your mind somehow?”

It certainly wasn’t by virtue of his personality.

“No, I just-- I don’t believe in it in the first place, and it’s-- Well, it’s different, once you know someone. Anyone.”

There was a time when this would have crushed him, driven him to radical action. To twisting his bedsheet tight and looking for somewhere to hang (there’s nowhere, he’s looked before, but he’d have tried it). To despair. Now, it rolls off, and she can’t know why.

“I suppose you’ve run out of use for me, then,” Hux says. “I wouldn’t have told me that.”

Out in the hall, a cleaning unit whines as it passes by, muffled slightly by the closed door.

Rey purses her lips, and waits until it’s gone to change the subject. “I haven’t seen him again. No dreams, no visions, no Chaos. Nothing since four days ago.”

It’s maddeningly indirect, but it feels like an admission. She’s got her answers, perhaps solved her problem. She’s cut off from the menace, at last.

And that. That makes perfect sense.

If Ren’s been able to pour all of his effort into his apparent bond with Hux, Hux may be his new tether to the real world--the Living Force, he called it. Ren himself certainly acted like she was out of the picture.

“He might come back,” is what he says.

Rey gives him that _oh-poor-creature_ simper again. “I guess we’ll see.”

She lingers for a few more moments, before sliding her hand off the bedrail.

“I’ve got to run to dinner, but I wanted--” She stops herself, studying him again. “--felt I should look in on you.”

“Alright,” he says. _Thank you_ would be a known lie.

“I’ll see you.”

With that, she turns on her heel and leaves the room. The door whirs shut behind her, sealing Hux in. The room doesn’t stay silent for long.

 

* * *

 

 

“What the fuck was she doing here?”

Apparently, death hasn’t interrupted Ren’s sense of timing. Hux turns left toward the sound of his voice and looks him over. His hair and outift haven’t changed, and he looks the most opaque that Hux has yet seen him. The light behind him all but vanishes the blue halo.

“Checking on me,” Hux shoots back, stiffening. “As I’m sure you heard.”

“I didn’t hear.” Anger lends the vaguely disembodied quality of Ren’s voice an extra layer of eeriness. “I sensed her presence, so I had to wait until she’d gone. She would have been able to see me,” he tacks on, as if by way of explanation. “I think.”

“Well, we wouldn’t have wanted that cataclysm.”

Ren purses his lips. “No,” he agrees after a moment. Then his voice and gaze harden again. “Why was she checking on you?”

“I suppose because she sort of put me here.” Hux gestures obliquely to the IV on his right, the length of the bed.

“By sending you back into Chaos, which you couldn’t handle.”

Hux bites back the _fuck you_ that might possibly sever the connection. “More or less,” he admits, then changes the subject. “I didn’t tell her you’ve been here, if that’s what you want to know.”

“Good.”

“You’re welcome.” Hux toys with the edge of the blanket, thin and worn between his fingers. When Ren goes quiet, it’s a decent chance to start in on the litany of questions.

“So how long did--” Hux starts. Too quietly.

Ren cuts him off.

“I haven’t asked you how it works with her.” There’s something simmering in his voice. It echoes a bit, in the vacuum of the room. Thunder, far-off. “How’d you get her to show you Chaos?”

Hux weighs his answer. “I didn’t ask for it.”

“So she just...showed up unannounced one day and asked if you wanted to see your dead CO?”

And he’s referring to himself as Hux’s commanding officer, despite the fact that he’s the ghost who’s been hovering by Hux’s bedside. It’s neither flattering nor promising.

Hux never thought he’d have to confess this, especially not to a pissed-off ghost. He’d based his decision to share the memories entirely on that premise: that Ren would never know. Now there’s hardly a way out of it.

“Not exactly,” he says, delicately. “Eventually, she told me it was because you asked about me every time she saw you.”

“I probably did.” Ren gnaws his lip. “Does she know?”

“About us?” Hux scoffs, takes the loophole Ren doesn’t know he’s offering.  “How could she not, if you wouldn’t shut up about me?”

“That didn’t have to mean anything.”

And of course, Rey _didn’t_ guess the truth, not based on Ren’s inquiries, but Ren doesn’t need to know that.

Hux shrugs, which slides the thin gown down his shoulder. Ren’s gaze follows the exposed skin. It’s a distraction. Hux doesn’t fix it.

But Ren clears his throat after a moment. “Did you tell her?”

“There was no way around it.”

“I’m having trouble imagining that.”

“She’s a _Jedi_ , Ren. She would have seen right through me, whether I’d said anything or not.”

It comes out cold, where it should be _she couldn’t look far into my thoughts without finding you, you’re imprinted on my brain, you’re a snag in my neural pathways, I’ve_ missed _you--_

“So you just volunteered information about my sex life the moment she said my name?” His tone has darkened considerably, but Hux senses no threat. Ren isn’t even made of matter. (It would be a bit pathetic, if he weren’t Ren and _here_ and infuriating as ever.)

“No, no, it wasn’t like that, it--”

“What was it like?”

Hux pauses, swallows. Looks down into his lap and realizes he’s fidgeting, fingers working under the tape holding the port to his left hand. He stills them deliberately, folds his hands instead.

Meeting Ren’s gaze again, he asks, “Do you really want the whole story?”

But he deserves it, regardless.

“I have plenty of time.” Ren’s right hand curls and uncurls at his side.

He means it, of course, but it’s still a lie.. He could disappear at any moment, leaving the battered thing between them incomplete and unsettled as ever.

Hux is exhausted. He works his fingers into the blanket, and fine white flecks of lint come off under his blunt nails. He can’t meet Ren’s eyes, though they finally look more brown than black in this light (still, however, more brown than gold).

“I didn’t want to be here, Ren. You know that.” He glances up long enough to gesture to the IV, down the length of the bed. “She offered me a permanent way out.”

Ren’s expression clouds over. “I thought she was against that.”

“Yes, she is, she confirmed that to me just now, but I think at first we both thought she would do it.” There’s a loose thread in the blanket, the weave wrinkling where it lolls out. Hux wraps it tight around his fingers, tugs, trying to break it off. “She only offered it at all because she was desperate.”

“What was she desperate for?”

“She wanted to know about you.” Hux isn’t strong enough to tear the thread, succeeds only in unspooling it further. He smooths it over, deliberately folds his hands.

“I thought she was done with me.” Ren’s voice goes low, dangerous. “Or was trying to be. She’s always exasperated when I see her in Chaos.”

“Probably because you haven’t given her what she wants.”

“What does she want?”

“To get rid of you, for one thing--” Hux risks a glance up, in time to catch humor rippling across Ren’s features. The corner of his mouth twitches. Hux keeps talking. “--and for another, answers. Why you did it, why you wanted to, all of it.”

“Don’t tell me she thinks it’s her fault.”

“I don’t think she ever did--not really--but I… I think I cured her of any doubt.”

He doesn’t give Ren the chance to react.

“That’s what she wanted, Ren,” Hux explains, forging ahead on a sort of inertia. If he stops, he won’t start again. “My memories of you, so she could study them, and try to make sense of what happened. And I showed her them. Nearly everything she wanted. I showed her us, there wasn’t any way around it. I--”

“What did you show her?” And it’s horrible, when he’s angry and he isn’t really here, his voice like a groundquake, the slow rumble of tectonic plates, making way for magma to surge through.

Hux has to look at him. To look down would be like turning away from an explosion, impossible. “I told you, anything she asked, I just wanted to end this--”

Both of Ren’s hands are balled now, and his volume is ticking upward. “There was only one thing about that she didn’t see. I told you you were the one _fucking_ part of me that I managed to keep her out of, because she wasn’t looking for it--and you gave al of it away--”

“Ren, I--”

“How many times did we say we were going to keep it to ourselves?” Ren isn’t shouting, but he’s gone sharp. “We agreed on that, and you what? Threw it away as soon as I was gone.”

Hux fights to keep his own volume low, mindful of the traffic in the hallway. His door is only so soundproof. “You _left_ ,” he spits. “There’s a difference.”

“I fuck up one time, and you betray me to the enemy.”

“It was either that or rot in this fucking prison without you.”

Ren ignores this. _Good._ (It was grotesquely transparent.)

“You showed her sex, didn’t you?” He’s looming now, or trying to, but no aggressive posturing can get the audible lump out of his throat.

“Ren, I didn’t mean to--” Hux starts.

“You did. Everything. You said you showed her everything she asked for.”

“I wouldn’t have had to, if you’d been here.”

“You have that little respect for me.”

“You did it first.” _Traded what we had for oblivion._ “And you actually succeeded.”

“Everything we agreed to still stood. My death shouldn’t change anything.”

“Well, it did. It changed everything, Ren, because--” _Because I love you,_ sticks in his throat.

But fuck, doesn’t he get it?

Hux shifts his trajectory. “No matter what I did or said it got you back here, didn’t it? Reliving the memories, reactivating this bond you’re using now, letting me see you in Chaos, then letting you _know me_ in Chaos--it got you out of Hell, at least for temporary respites, and I’d like to suggest that it was worth it.”

“But that wasn’t your intent.”

“Perhaps the Force willed it.”

“Perhaps, but still--”

And Hux has had enough. He’ll say whatever needs saying (what he’s worried needed saying since this all began.)

“I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” Hux repeats, though Ren didn’t exactly ask for it. His throat tightens, and his mouth is going dry. His tongue feels enormous, like some dead amphibious creature, swollen and half-dehydrated inside his mouth. He swallows around it.

“For all of it,” he says. “For not doing enough or seeing the signs while you were alive. I couldn’t have fixed it, but I could have helped. And for the memories. You didn’t deserve that kind of exposure, even if the byproduct is fortuitous.” Hux sucks a breath in through his nose. “Forgive me.”

It doesn’t come out as a request, and it’s nothing like a question. It hangs heavy in the air between them, dark and tangible. An order. Compelling to action.

Ren thins his lips, looks at his bluish feet. Bare, though the rest of him his in full regalia. “Hux, it isn’t your fault.”

Hux scoffs. He’s not following Ren’s logic. It’s nothing new, but still. “What happened to _betrayed you to the enemy_?”

“The memories, yeah, that’s on you, but not. Not what happened to me. Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” Hux says, and there was a time--six months ago--when he wouldn’t have meant it. He does now, but he needs the reminder. It doesn’t hurt that it’s coming from Ren. “Yes, I do. I just told you I don’t think I could have fixed it.”

Ren shakes his head. “‘Nothing could have. Not completely.”

“What about the rest, then?” Hux’s hand strays to the fraying blanket again, but he refrains. Swallows hard. “What is on me. Can you forgive me.”

Ren takes a moment. He runs a hand through his hair, and blinks a few times, eyes undeniably watery. Hux wonders abruptly what would happen if he started crying, and didn’t wipe it away. If the tears would roll off his cheeks and collect on the floor as little blue orbs, or just disappear into thin air.

“You’re right,” Ren says, and does scrub a hand across his face. “It got me here, whatever else it did.”

Hux’s own eyes are prickling. “Is that a _yes_?”

Ren nods once, and swallows visibly. “It is.”

His lips are full and quivering, still red, the most vivid thing about this shade of him. Hux would sit forward, grab his arm, pull him onto the bed, and kiss him stupid, if he were made of matter.

As things are, Hux still sits forward, but only thanks him.

Ren corrects him just as quickly. “You don’t have to say that.” He rests a hand on the bedrail, though it doesn’t do any good. “I shouldn’t have, either. Left you like this.”

It doesn’t quite sound like an apology, but Hux recognizes it anyway.

“I know,” Hux says, “but you’re here now.”

Ren reaches for him, as if thoughtlessly, leaning uncomfortably over the rail to cup his cheek. Hux leans into it on sight alone, and Ren looks down, without moving back.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hisses, as his fingers pass through Hux’s skin. He resumes eye contact; they’re forehead to forehead, nose to nose, but Hux can’t feel his breath. “I want to kiss you so much right now.”

Hux inhales sharply for the both of them, and tries to smile His voice still comes out water-logged. “This usually is the right point in the argument for that.”

“No.” Ren does manage a smirk. “Would have been sooner.”

“The sex would’ve, perhaps.”

And that does it, for some reason.

A tear runs hot down Hux’s cheek, for all his blinking. It doesn’t help that Ren traces its path with his thumb, as if he could stop it. Hux reaches up to brush back the flow instead, scratching his cheek with the port still on the back of his hand.

“Fuck,” he mutters.

Ren’s still hunched over the bedrail, blinking rapidly himself. “I miss you.”

“How much longer can you stay?”

“Probably a while still.”

“Good.” Hux can’t bring himself to reach up, reach out. The distance is nil and infinity. “Can you sit down?” It’s out before he can stop it, then it’s too late. “On the bed. Could you get closer, I can’t--” He bites back a sob, but his shoulders still shake with it.

“I can’t feel the bed, Hux.” Ren’s voice is a murmur, more apologetic than his apology. “It wouldn’t feel like I was sitting.”

Hux sniffs, and feels himself flushing darkly at the sound. “You aren’t sinking through the floor.”

“I’m standing up in Chaos. That’s what’s orienting me here.”

“Can’t you try?” But it wouldn’t be the same, wouldn’t be comfortable or intimate if Ren felt like he was crouching in mid-air. “No, never mind, I-- Could you sit on the floor? There’s a floor, or ground or something in Chaos, isn’t there?”

“Yeah, but _you_ shouldn’t.” And that’s Ren all over, knows exactly what Hux is thinking, and argues with it.

“I don’t give a shit. Sit down.”

Hux swings his legs over the side of the bed. The linoliplast is ice-cold, and he sets his feet on it too hard, sending shockwaves through his nerves. It doesn’t matter, either. He picks up the thin pillows he’s been propped up on, and what the hell, the blanket, too.

When he turns back toward Ren, Ren’s sitting under the window. The yellow slats of light between the blinds have dwindled and faded while they spoke. They’re little more than pink now, and all but shine through Ren’s crossed legs.

It’s feeble and pathetic and inadequate, but Hux puts one of the pillows on the floor as a seat, the other against the wall as a shoulder cushion, and sits down with his legs folded under him. He puts his head on the outline of Ren’s shoulder and presses his body against the outline of Ren’s side. Ren reaches to put an arm around him, but it isn’t right, with the light shining through his limbs.

“This is idiotic,” Hux says.

“It’s the best we’ve got.”

Hux purses his lips and nods silently.

“Hey,” Ren says, after a moment,  “try closing your eyes.”

Hux huffs a dry, mirthless laugh. “So I can’t even _see_ that you’re here?”

“I’ll talk to you. My voice hasn’t changed.”

It has, a little, but Hux doesn’t argue, doesn’t want to decline the offer. He closes his eyes, pretends his ear his over Ren’s voice box, pretends he can feel him vibrating in his bones.

 

* * *

 

The chrono reads 0241 when Hux wakes up, freezing, limbs stiff and tangled, one shoulder numb where it was pressed into the wall. Moonlight seeps through the blinds and dapples white across the floor. Ren’s shade doesn’t filter it.

Hux limps back into bed, and manages to sleep.

 

* * *

  

“I think we should try it.”

The next afternoon, blinds open. It’s cloudy out, and the light is ashen across the floor, the sheets. Ren’s pacing the length of the bed, thinking aloud. He’s comes to a stop again facing Hux, eyebrows lifted imploringly.

“It wouldn’t work,” Hux returns.

“Why not? Because I’m incorporeal?”

Hux tries not to roll his eyes. The nonsense has been going for the entire ten minutes that Ren has been here. There are only so many ways to decline a handjob from a ghost.

“Yes, in fact.,” he says, patiently. “It would be like...humping my pillow. Here, with the droids and the doctors, in the middle of the afternoon.” They removed the empty IV stand this morning, along with the unused ports in his hands, but someone could still drop in at any time.

Ren’s gaze darts over his shoulder to the darkened ‘fresher entrance. “What about in the shower?”

“I have to comm for a droid first,” Hux says, then adds for Ren’s furrowed brow: “For linens and a spotter.”

“The droid watches you shower?” There’s a smile to his scoff. It cuts, somehow.

“No, but--” Hux starts.

“Okay, so what’s the problem?”

Hux inhales sharply, then folds his arms over his chest. “I can’t feel your hands, Ren. You can’t jerk me off if I can’t feel your hand.” Compelled to soften it, he goes on, “Provided I can even get it up after months of malnutrition.”

Even the dreams had stopped doing it, there for the last few weeks in his cell. He’s been eating better, and no longer feels dizzy whenever he stands, but they keep a fall sensor beside his bed, and he doesn’t quite have energy to spare.

Of course, Ren ignores the entire medical caveat. “You don’t have to feel my hand. I’ll put it over yours and just...guide you.”

“No.”

“Why?” There’s heat in his voice, but disappointment flickers briefly across his face and pulls his lips from the smile to their standard pout. “What’s wrong with that?”

_What isn’t?_

Hux hardly knows where to start.

“Everything.” He drops his hands to the bed, works his fingers into the blanket. “I can hardly look at you without crying when you’re...like this...” _bluish and dead and intangible,_ he can’t say. “...much less get off.”

Ren just smirks. “I thought you said you couldn’t even get it up, ‘much less get off.’” The repeated phrase he intones mockingly. He’s irrepressible, and under normal circumstances, Hux would already be naked.

With circumstances as they are, he glares. “Fuck you, I _meant_ that. I…” He trails off, glances down at the blanket. They changed it out yesterday, and he has yet to find where this one is unraveling. He picks at it anyway. “It would be awful. It would feel even less like you’re here.”

Ren shrugs. “I’ll watch you, then.”

_Irrepressible._

“You want to stand in the shower and watch me?”

“I think about it all the time.” Ren leans over Hux, and would put his hand on the bedrail. He quirks an eyebrow coquettishly. “I miss seeing your cock.”

It startles a laugh out of Hux, which he hides unsuccessfully behind his bandaged hand. “I suppose that’s the entire reason you’ve returned from the Great Beyond?”

“It’s a gorgeous cock.”

“Fuck off.”

Ren straightens, still wearing that same smirk. “Comm your droid.”

 

* * *

 

It’s uncomfortable in the shower, Hux with little more than a semi, overly conscious of his sharp elbows, the jut of his hipbones.

“Are you finished counting my ribs?” he asks Ren, who’s across from him, fully clad and giving his half-hard cock no more attention than the rest of his body.

“I’m not.” Ren’s voice has a hushed quality to it, which is an effect either of the sonic or some misplaced sense of reverence. “Just missed all of this.”

Hux has no idea why. His torso is webbed with veins, the skin is translucent, paperlike, under the soft white light. He’s trying not to look at anything but his cock, slick and pink between his fingers. Actively ignoring his unkempt pubes.

Dutifully, he works his hand up and down his shaft, stroking periodically at the tip in a vain attempt to inspire some arousal. It would be more embarrassing if he weren’t so distracted. This is the first time looking at Ren while naked and touching himself hasn’t gotten him hard immediately.

But of course, this isn’t quite Ren, and Ren is dead, and the sonic isn’t warm enough, and _fuck_ , he’s flagging again.

“This isn’t working,” he hisses to Ren, minding the droid outside the closed door.

“Can’t I help?” Ren sounds regretful. And small.

“You’re making it worse.”

“You don’t have to get off for me, not if you don’t--”

“It would be a waste not to come after all this.” Hux sighs, gives it another frustrated jerk.

Ren looks him up and down again. “I mean, I agree, but--”

Hux sucks in a breath, then cuts him off, hand stilling for a moment.  “Could you stand outside?”

“What?”

“It might be easier if you weren’t--” _bluish and dead and staring_

Ren’s projected skin is chalky enough that Hux can’t make out a blush, but Ren averts his eyes as if embarrassed, all the same. “Okay, sure, sorry--”

“I’ve gotten rather good at just...imagining it.” It’s all Hux can do not to reach out to him. “It’ll be you in my head.”

Ren purses his lips, but nods like he gets it. “Okay.”

After a few minutes, he watches Hux dress.

 

* * *

 

 “We’re going to figure this out,” Ren says, this evening.

They’re sitting in the floor again, knees pulled to chests. Their thighs would be pressed together: Hux’s left to Ren’s right, Hux’s pale and gray-clad, Ren’s blurry around the edges.

“How.” It comes out flat and desolate. “Is there anything else you can do from your end?”

Ren looks at his knees. “I don’t know, I—I feel like I’ve exhausted everything I know, but there has to be something else.”

Hux clears his throat, bites his lip. Hesitates. It’s worth suggesting, at least. “Ren, there is one person on Chandrila who might—“ The rest of the sentence catches in his throat, hung up on the planet’s name.

Ren’s finally made it back here, despite the memories and the Light and all his one-time terror. It hadn’t registered before.

(Hux has gotten out of the habit of considering what planet he’s on, a natural effect, he supposes, of always being on the same one.)

“Ren, are you—“ he starts, groping for Ren’s hand instinctively, then passing through it. “I hadn’t considered.” _That you came here for me, now, when you wouldn’t before, even for the Order. “_ Is it...like you thought? That bad?”

“It isn’t like I’m actually here.” Ren smiles wanly, then curls his fingers around Hux’s, so that the edges of them bleed into Hux’s skin. “And I don’t have memories on this side of the city, Ben never--” He stops abruptly.

Hux matches Ren’s former wryness.“What, no childhood outings to a maximum security prison?”

It has the intended effect—Ren snorts. “Only because no one in here can vote.”

And there it is, the ugly underbelly of democracy--Ren witnessed it for years. Small wonder he gave the best years of his life to destroying it, or more correctly,  the woman who represents it.

And _fuck._ It’s fair to warn him, now that he’s somewhat real again.

“She’s here, you know,” Hux says, after a moment. “Not _here_ here, but. Planetside. At least that’s what Rey’s indicated..”

“I know.” Ren’s hand falls through Hux’s as his gaze drops. “There’s a bond there too, on some level.”

Hux bites his lip. He shouldn’t have prodded. He follows eight years of habit and falls back on poor humor. “In that case, thank you for haunting me instead.”

Ren looks back up, tries to run a hand through his hair, but misses, as he can’t feel it. “I’ve haunted her for thirty years,” he says, “without meaning to. It’s your turn.”

Hux plasters a smile over the panic that rises at _thirty years._

If he has to look at Ren for thirty years but never touch him, he’ll lose his mind faster than he would with any kind of solitude or starvation. He can’t imagine it. The frustration of this, the futile, desperate _reaching_. Ren, slightly off-color. Not gone, but certainly less than here.

But Ren meant it as a comfort. That he’s here, for whatever definition of the word, because he wants to be. (Wants _Hux_.)

Hux thanks him again. “I need it.”

 

* * *

 

GH-15 weighs him the next day, to evaluate how his metabolism is reacting to the refeeding, they explain, and therefore at what rate his caloric intake should be increased.

Ren was here when the droid arrived, but fortunately Hux wasn’t sitting in the floor with him. After being cut off mid-sentence by the whir of the door, he’s retreated to the corner, watching in silence as GH-15 bustles around their hovercart.

The droid’s humming faintly, as it does, and Hux ventures an amused glance at Ren once its optical receptors are pointed squarely at the bottom shelf of the cart. The corner of Ren’s mouth twitches feebly upward, but something between worry and nostalgia clouds his gaze. Hux averts his own.

GH-15 extracts an unadorned but impeccably polished duraluminum square from the hovercart’s supply rack and gently sets it on the floor beside Hux’s bed. They tap at the display screen embedded in their right forelimb.

“Just synching up,” they chirp, with a jerky nod toward the scale.

Whatever the scale registers will go directly into Hux’s file, which is, he knows, just as well. He doesn’t need something else to fixate on. (Ren is more than enough.) Still, it’s disconcerting that he won’t have complete data on his own damn body.

He isn’t going to think about. He ventures another muted smile at Ren, whose expression is even less guarded than before. It him a moment to register that Hux is looking at him, then muster a faint smile of his own in return.

It fades quickly, and he goes back to gnawing his lip. Hux wonders if it will be bleeding once he gets back to Chaos. He doesn’t need to look so worked up, but then—this is somewhat new to him.

Hux could count on one hand (if not one finger) the number of times Ren has had to sit in medbay for him. Historically, it’s the other way around: Ren with the blaster holes, Ren with the dehydration after a week-long mission, Ren with the migraines and nausea and occasional electrical burns after a session with Snoke.

It might be unnerving to be on the other side, but still. He doesn’t have to look so concerned. Hux is fine. He’s always fine. He’s never needed to be fussed or worried over.

He’d be angrier over it—his pride more wounded, perhaps—if the simple fact of Ren’s presence didn’t outweigh any preoccupations with the particular expression on his face.

But regardless, Hux doesn’t look back at him as GH-15 ushers him onto the scale.

After a moment, the droid chirrups simply, “Progress.”

“Positive trend?” Hux confirms, though a tangled corner of his brain is screaming _failure_. He silences it, or at least tries to stifle it. A higher weight does not equal failure, because death no longer equals success. He’s living for something again. Ren needs him.

“Affirmative,” GH-15 says. “At this rate, we might just have you out of here in a week.”

Hux steps off the scale and lowers himself back onto the bed, swinging his legs up carelessly behind him.

“A week, really?” he replies, but addresses it to Ren as GH-15 bends to collect the scale again.

Ren raises an eloquent eyebrow, as if to ask whether that’s good or bad.

Hux isn’t sure. Ren will almost certainly be able to follow him there, if he can come to the infirmary, but he hasn’t given much thought to returning to his cell, where all this started.

If Ren looks grieved and worried over Hux’s bones and need for weigh-ins, Hux doesn’t want to watch his face when he sees the pathetic flimsipad of dot graphs. Glorified scatterplots, really, the best art an engineer could manage.

At least they’ll finally be able to have a laugh over the atrocious novels. (It’ll have to be quiet, though, if Hux wants to maintain what’s left of his sane image in front of the guards.)

He tilts his head to one side in response, hopes Ren reads, _Up to you_.

“You’re recovering quite nicely, Zero Six One Nine Nine,” GH-15 confirms.

Ren smiles back, a little more authentically this time. Hux returns it, almost without thinking. Maintains it, once he starts to.

Whatever. Let them think he’s mad. They already think worse. He has _this_ again, and might soon have more.

 

* * *

 

“All right.” Hux folds his hands in his lap, having shuffled in the bed to face Ren completely, back no longer propped up. “Explain to me again why our bond isn’t strong enough to allow you to influence the physical world.”

They’re figuring this out, like Ren said. Of course, Ren‘s here at 0300 hours. Said he didn’t realize he’d wake Hux, arriving. He thinks it’s a good sign for their bond that Hux is reacting subconsciously to shifts in the Force.

He said that—“ _subconsciously reacting to shifts in the Force”_ —and then had the balls to say Hux should go back to sleep. As if the realization that he’s apparently acquired some level of Force-awareness--not sensitivity, Ren quickly cured him of that fear--wouldn’t be enough to keep him up the rest of the night. (If only for fear of nightmares.)

Now, after several minutes back, Ren’s pacing at the foot of Hux’s bed, making a slow, spectral circuit between the closed door and the windows, with the blinds still half-open. He pauses in front of them, outline undeniably blue in the darkness, and looks into the night when he answers, not at Hux.

“It isn’t a question of strength,” he says, quietly. “I’m not actually sure how our bond could be stronger, but it’s— I mean, our relationship has—used to have a physical aspect, but the bond itself doesn’t exist as a tangible object to latch onto. There’s no way to have a physical influence if you aren’t tied down to something in the Living Force.”

“So pick something.” Hux grabs at the little hover table beside his bed, and plucks a pink plast cup off it. The beige residue of a nutridrink rings the bottom. “Here, just. Do whatever you do, and latch onto this.”

Ren huffs, sounding somewhere perfectly triangulated between amused, aggravated, and indulgent. “Tried that. It can’t be just anything. It has to have a preexisting...resonance...in the Force.”

Hux feels _on_ , like he shouldn’t when he’s malnourished, and it’s well before dawn, thoughts all but racing. He quickly accommodates Ren’s added condition, amends his solution accordingly.

“So do me,” he says. “We’re already attached spiritually. Just anchor to my body.”

Ren turns, eyebrows climbing his forehead. “We call that _possession_.”

Hux sobers. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

Hux sets down the dirty nutridrink cup, lifts the small pitcher on the same table and pours himself a disposable cup of water. He takes a sip, then runs a hand through his hair, thinking. This isn’t the first time Ren and his Force have woken him in the small hours, but it is the first time he could possibly help fix things.

“So,” he says, and draws the back of his hand across his mouth, “what is considered a _Force-resonant,_ inorganic object?”  


Ren’s crossed the floor again. Reaching the door, he turns on his heel. Doesn’t miss a beat. “My lightsaber, probably.”

“Which one?”

It’s a valid question, between a birthright and two past lives, but it still stops Ren in his tracks. A bit of the blue halo lingers in front of him, as if the laws of physics expect the rest of him to follow, but it quickly dissipates.

“The only one you’ve seen me use,” he replies, stonily.

“I don’t know what became of it,” Hux admits, matching his harshness. “It’s probably in an evidence laboratory somewhere on-planet. I could ask Rey--”

“ _No._ ”

Hux sets down his water, laces his fingers, and straightens his back. “Do you have another contact here I’m unaware of?”

“The lightsaber was an example,” Ren retorts. “Any Dark artifact would work. Not a holocron, it’s too late for that, but plenty of ancient Sith had armor or jewelry or other weapons that they used.”

“I highly doubt there’s any Sith memorabilia on this planet,” Hux says, ignoring for the moment the fact that he’d have no access to it, even if there were. “But if you could use the Light…?”

“No use.” Ren shakes his head. “I wouldn’t be able to feel it.”

“Wouldn’t be able to feel it?” Hux tries to tamp down the excitement in his voice. “You mean, even now that you’re back--well, sort of back--you’re not feeling…”

Hux trails off. _Feeling the Light, feeling torn in two, feeling trapped._ What if death did free him, in a way? It’s a horrible thought, of course, but not implausible.

“Not like I used to,” he confirms. “I’m still technically in Chaos, so it doesn’t get through.”

That isn’t good enough.

“And what about when you are physically anchored here?”

Hux won’t bring Ren back just to watch him crumble again, drive himself to such a breaking point that Chaos is a comfort.

“I’ll still exist in Chaos, and since I’ll be anchored to a Dark object, there shouldn’t be any…” He glances down, briefly. “...conflict.”

“Good.” Hux’s muscles relax, though he hadn’t realized he’d tensed. “But where exactly would we get said dark object, with me in here?”

“I don’t know.” Ren deflates somewhat, resumes pacing.

“Why can’t I ask her, Ren?” Hux persists. “She’d have an interest in anchoring you here, if only to permanently break your bond. If I phrased it like that, I’m sure she would help.”

“I don’t need her _help_.”

“I know, but--”

“And even if you talked her into giving you the lightsaber, there would still be some kind of ritual or process involved.” Ren pauses at the window, studies the floor. “I don’t know what it is.”

“I’m confident she could research it for you, if you’d just let me--”

 _“Under no circumstances.”_ Ren’s voice has that volcanic quality again. But he can’t explode. He can burn up from within, but can never explode. Moreover, nothing he says--none of his futile rumblings--can stop Hux from doing anything.

Hux pops his lips. “I suppose you’ll just keep thinking about it indefinitely, then?”

“Something will come to me.” He rounds Hux’s bed, positioning himself on the left side, as usual. “I have time.”

“If you say so.”

Hux would much rather believe him, but Ren has a poor track record when it comes to altering the nature of the Force.

He just rolls his eyes at Hux’s apparent lack of faith. Hux lets him change the subject.

 

* * *

 

It takes the jackass ten hours to leave, in his longest feat since the thirty-six hour stint before Hux regained consciousness. Hux asks him enough questions about Chaos to keep him talking, but only half-listens to the elaborate answers, turning wording over and over in his mind. Not quite _debating_ whether to confess all of this to Rey, but justifying it.

If nothing comes of it, he decides, Ren will be no worse off for what he never knew, and if it works, well--he’ll get over his inhibitions at the prospect of sex. Hux has weathered his anger before, and now more than ever, it’s worth it.

Ren ogles Hux’s breakfast and lunch, and stands quietly--as if the droids could hear him--when the meals are delivered, and when GH-15 comes in for Hux’s morning vital reading and bloodwork.

When Ren finally disappears at 1538, Hux falls into a dead sleep--making up for the early-morning interruption--and doesn’t wake up until the sunlight has gone orange through the blinds, and GH-15 is calling his number.

“Geeaych?” he asks, once it’s lifted the med-scanner from his forehead. “May I inquire about your functions?”

GH-15 hangs the scanner from its rack on the cart, straightening the white duraplast before looking back up. They hum faintly. “Ask away, Zero Six One Nine Nine.”

“Are you or any of the other med droids here able to relay external messages on behalf of patients? As I assume comm privileges look different in the infirmary.”

Hux has never had a use for comm privileges before, though he was briefed on them at the beginning of his sentence. He has a vague image of a room lined with low shelves, each hosting a single battered, lusterless communicator--holo capability disabled--for use once a week, at most, upon request.

He doesn’t have anyone to call. Until today, he’s been content to let Rey come when she feels like it. And it isn’t as if he has her frequency. (But a HoloNet-connected droid could look it up.)

“I am a medical specialist only, I’m afraid,” GH-15 is saying, head dipping briefly down. “But my counterpart, TC-897, is tasked exclusively with ensuring patient privileges.”

“Excellent,” Hux says. “Would you please have Teecee Eight Nine Seven come in?”

 

* * *

 

The next morning, a familiar, sharp, and bitter scent wafts into his room as soon as the doors part for Rey. She enters with a rather taut expression, hair pinned messily to the top of her head, and a portable flimsi cup in each hand.

“Armitage,” she says, before she’s halfway across the floor, or the doors have even shut, “what is it? I woke up to this message labeled _urgent_ and came as fast as I could.” She stops at the bedside and holds out one of the cups.

In closer proximity, the aroma is unmistakable, and the gray tag dangling beneath the lid confirms that it’s Tarine. He hasn’t had any in six months.

“This is your go-to, right?” Rey asks, when he doesn’t immediately take it. “Force knows I’ve seen it enough.”

Hux blinks. “Yes, it’s-- yes, it’s exactly right.” He takes it from her with one hand, but quickly wraps both around it, letting the heat leech into his chilled skin. “Thank you,” he manages.

Rey shrugs, and half-pivots as she seats herself in the chair TC-897 brought in for the visit. “I stopped for caf. It would have been rude not to share.”

Hux doesn’t bother arguing, too busy inhaling the scent of the tea, rising slow and pungent to completely mask the layers of infirmary odor: bleach and antiseptic over sickness and rot. He barely manages not to close his eyes, to focus on anything but the bouquet of imported herbs steeping between his hands. He thanks her again, and she takes a gulp of her caf.

“Like I said,” she repeats herself, “I came as soon as I could. What do you need?”

Hux sips experimentally at his tea, but it’s still hot enough to singe his tongue. He lowers it, but not too far from his nose.

He’s planned for this. He knows exactly what has to come next.

“Perhaps we should go outside for this,” he says, with a smile he knows must be rueful at best.

Rey’s brow crinkles above her caf lid. “What?”

“I need to apologize."

 

* * *

 

Hux begins at Starkiller, where the memory went wrong for him and black for Rey. He mentions the nightmare on the boat,  the ashes, Ren’s hands on his.

Ren when he woke up, Ren after she left, furious, then determined. He explains Ren’s translucence, his insubstance, his grounding in the Dark, at last, and his need for a physical anchor, despite his limited options.

They don’t go outside, and the cooling unit kicks on, a quiet drone under Hux’s halting narration. Rey drains her caf, and says nothing but a thoughtful _I believe you_ , until he finishes.

He’s still holding his tea, but has hardly touched it. It’s gone tepid and dark, having steeped too long undisturbed. He sets it on the table beside the pink pitcher and Rey’s empty caf cup, disappointed.

The chrono reads 1103, and Hux realizes it’s been nearly twenty hours since Ren left. He could be back at any time, could have already tried to come back but sensed Rey’s presence. She needs to get out of here. Hux needs to _get her_ out of here, but she’s sitting in the plast chair with both feet on the ground and wisps of hair curling around her neck, studying him.

“He doesn’t know you’ve told me this,” she says, after a moment. “You said he didn’t want me to know about any of it.”

“That’s correct.”

“But you’re asking for my help anyway.” Rey stretches her legs, drags one heel across the linoliplast with a faint squeak. “That _is_ what you’re doing, isn’t it?”

Hux nods. “I’ll determine how to break it to him once you’ve got a solution in hand. He’ll be alright with it then. He’ll have to be.”

Rey looks back up at him. “But why would I try this at all? It...isn’t the Jedi way, for one thing, playing with the Cosmic Force like this. There’s a reason he’s in Chaos. I mean, he--” She hesitates. “--earned it.”

It rankles to hear-- _stings_ , if Hux is honest--but he’s prepared for it. His capacity for unctious persuasion isn’t entirely out of practice.

“That may be,” he says, folding his hands, “but you yourself said you’ve had no visions of him nor of Chaos since that last memory I shared. Has that changed?”

“No, but--”

“You now know that this dry spell directly correlates with Ren’s attachment to his and my bond, through which he’s projecting an image of himself here, as often as possible,” Hux starts, giving her his second smile of the visit, this one carefully engineered to radiate confidence. “I’m certain the same would be true were he permanently bound to a physical object in this plane of reality, would it not? You’d be rid of him for good.”

Rey purses her lips for a moment before admitting she supposes so.

Perfect. She’s coming around.

“And,” Hux continues, “you’d get to see justice served on him _here_ , not just the...cosmic consequences of the Darkness.”

“But would _he_ go along with that?” Suspicion shadows her voice. “He’d do his part to bind himself here, just to-- what? To sit in prison?”

And of course, that’s the last thing Ren would want. Half the fucking impetus for his death, on that particular day, at that particular moment, at least: the looming apparition of facing his mother and Rey and the rest of the Republic, the final blow that shattered a splintering mirror. He wouldn’t want this, of course, but--

“It would have to be better than Chaos,” he assures Rey, with his smile pinned in place. “I’ll convince him,” he says, though he doubts it. He won’t even be able to broach it, especially on top of Rey’s involvement.

Rey seems to mull this over, swings one ankle to rest on her knee. She leans forward. “So. I get free of Kylo, Kylo gets free of me, and the Republic gets justice against its other most violent former adversary. What do you get, Armitage?”

Hux raises both eyebrows, lets the smile drop. “Besides the knowledge that my partner is no longer suffering in eternal Darkness?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Rey starts.

Hux swallows deliberately, but lets her get no further. “In fact, I do have a request. Not a stipulation,” he clarifies, “merely a request. Not immediately, of course, but as soon as possible, after whatever trials need to be carried out and whatever solitary confinement sentences, are completed, there is…” He falters. Asking for things--for unearned favors--is childish and weak and unseemly. But he needs. “...one thing.”

“Okay,” Rey says, softly. “Which is?”

“A shared cell.”

Rey’s face clouds over with that nerve-grating sympathy, but she doesn’t argue. Ren will just have to forgive him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings: Hux's physical recovery from malnutrition is described in some detail (to include being weighed, though again no numbers are mentioned.


	12. The Way of the Force

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No additional content warnings for this one!

Two days later, Hux blindly unravels another blanket, eyes on Ren as he paces beside the length of the bed. He’s paused now, halfway up it, bent slightly at the waist as if to loom over Hux.

“I’ve never need a damn thing from her,” he all but snarls, “I told you I’m figuring this out independently.”

His voice is on edge, barely contained, but he’s doing better now than after Hux first told him about Rey’s plan.

Hux got no further than, _“Rey’s coming to fix this_ ” before Ren cursed, accused Hux of betrayal (rightfully and therefore hurfully). He gave Hux the chance to answer none of his indignant questions, then just.

Disappeared.

It was striking--unsettling in a different way than the usual slow fade. He vanished: one moment Ren, the next blank wall and pale sunlight.

Hux had been too pissed to be genuinely upset, but anxiety gnawed at him over lunch, for the two hours until Ren materialized at the foot of his bed, looking vengeful.

Now, Hux can hardly keep his voice down. “She’s already figured it out. She has the ritual, she has something for you to latch onto. It would be a waste not to take what she’s offering.”

_Armitage--_ her message had read this morning, transcribed on a perishable readout from TC-897 _\--I’ve found how the old Lords did it, and I’ve got the right object. We’ll need you present--you’ll hold onto it and remember something while the process happens, then give it back to me. I’m saying too much. I’ll be there tonight, half past midnight. Keep him there, but we’ll go somewhere quieter. R._

Hux read over it ten times before dismissing the droid, allowing them to permanently delete it. He has a memory in mind for it, though he doesn’t quite understand. Ren needs to.

And Ren refuses, somehow both petulant and afraid. “What’s the price?”

Hux looks at him squarely, and plays the fool. “I’m sorry?”

“What does she want out of this? What happens to me after?”

For some reason, the _me_ stings, like they’re suddenly two parts again, not a whole. It makes the lie easier.

“She didn’t say.”

Ren studies Hux’s face, and if he could sense the Living Force from Chaos, he’d catch the deceit. As it is, he just glowers.

“She’s going to lock me up. She’ll capture me and try me and take me to—“ He stops short, a horrible dark fire in his gaze.  “—to Organa, and then put me in a cell like yours. She knows I’d never come back just to live like that. Of course she wouldn’t tell you.”

Ice congeals in the pit of Hux’s stomach. He’s known Ren wouldn’t accept this--what Hux himself has arranged for them--but it stings to hear.

He could try to explain himself, to persuade him, but the thought of Ren accusing him of betrayal again turns his stomach. Better if they’re both the victims here. Both equally surprised when the moment comes.

“She _didn’t tell me,_ Ren,” Hux says, “because it’s obvious. It’s the only way this can go.”

“It isn’t.”

“True,” Hux agrees. To Ren’s quizzical look, he clarifies, “There may be a chance they’ll put you in my cell. Conjugal privileges and all that.”

“I don’t want a cell, not here. I don’t care whose it is.”

Hux manages not to flinch at the unintended blow, just twists the thread he’s holding tighter around his finger. The pulse throbs. “It’s your only option.”

“Not if I escape,” Ren counters.

“From your cell?” Hux isn’t sure whether to laugh. “This is a highly secure facility, Ren. It’s equipped to contain Force users.”

But Ren’s pacing again, the anger draining from his voice, replaced by resolve. “So we’ll get past her tonight, before she can put me away.”

“Don’t be stupid, Ren. You don’t even have a weapon, and her abilities—“

“I can beat her.”

He can’t.

The two of them have proven that time and again, and it’s even truer now. She’ll overpower him in an instant, weak as he’ll have to be, adjusting to a physical form again. She won’t hurt him intentionally, not when the entire point of this is keeping him intact, but she _could_ kill him—disembody him again—if she had to. He and this notion of his stand no chance.

Hux folds his arms. “Historically, you’ve been equally matched with her at best, and now—“

“You doubt me.”

“No, I don’t, Ren. I just—“ It would be right to warn him, to explain, but the wounded quiver of his lips around the word _traitor_ is a strong deterrent. “Will you surrender, if you have to?”

“I won’t have to.”

Hux sighs. He’ll have to within minutes, but it’s hardly worth fighting over. If a delusion is the only thing that will get him to go along with this, Hux won’t argue. If he won--convinced Ren he stands no chance--it would only talk him out of the whole plan. They’d lose their one chance to have something again. Anything.

And Rey is smarter than to bring someone back, only to kill them again. The only danger here is wounding Ren’s pride. Hardly a casualty worth missing.

“Be careful, facing her.” It’s more warning than Ren will need. “Don’t throw this away.”

“I won’t.”

“Very well,” Hux acquiesces.

It’s going to be fine, he knows. Rey will take him down gently.

 

* * *

 

Ren does disappear again, after, claiming he’ll need his full strength tonight. He doesn’t try to touch Hux, which--for all it’s useless--aches somewhere between Hux’s ribs.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s somewhat more cordial when he returns after nightfall, but he’s quiet, restless, like he’s buzzing with energy he can’t release. He can’t, of course, and even alive, he’s never done well pent up inside himself.

Once it becomes clear he’s going to be noncommunicative, Hux buzzes GH-15 to alert them he’s taking a shower. He’s made enough progress over the past few days that they no longer have to stand outside the door. He’s still, however, accountable.

 

* * *

 

“Do you know if she’s bringing my lightsaber?”

A bit before 2300, Ren’s coaxed Hux into the floor. They’re sitting under the window again, Hux’s hair damp against the wall.

“She made no mention of what she’s bringing, Ren.”

And Hux had made no suggestions.

“This will be easy, if she is.”

The presence or absence of Ren’s lightsaber has never posed a problem for her before, but Hux knows better than to say so. He’s emerged from every fight with her alive.

Hux realizes belatedly that he trusts her.

 

* * *

 

Hux can’t tell Ren any of the things he wants to: how he can’t wait to take his cock, fuck his tits, just _kiss him_. For hours. Years. Can’t tease him that they’ll have nothing better to do for the rest of their lives, for fear of shattering the illusion.

Hux won’t let him disappear again.

Ren is no more forthcoming about his own plans, a telltale of insecurity. He seems aware that Hux doesn’t fully support this, but Hux lets him wallow in it, able to offer no comfort.

The conversation comes in spurts, short flurries before it inevitably lags again. The silences between grow longer, and around 0000 hours, the heating unit kicks on, lulling.

Hux is nearly drowsing, still in the floor, when the whir of the doors startles him back to full alertness. He looks left, checking instinctively for Ren. His chest unclenches to find he’s still here, already on his feet.

Hux staggers up after him, settling onto the foot of the bed as the doors part fully, and Rey steps in.

It occurs to Hux that for all he knows both Ren and Rey, for all he understands their bond, he’s never actually been in the same room with both of them at once. He’s been missing out on the ice in the air.

He offers Rey a greeting, but she looks past him, eyes locking with Ren’s.

Ren isn’t even technically here, and Hux feels he’s intruding on something at once deeply private and unfathomably momentous, a meeting of old gods, or of the particles that are about to collide and create the fabric of the universe--light and dark. Black hole and blue giant. Incompatible dipoles.

There’s no balance here.

Rey folds her arms and looks him up and down. She seems unperturbed by the blue halo, as if, perhaps, she’s familiar with ghosts. She doesn’t exactly greet him. “Armitage tells me you’ve agreed to cooperate.”

“Armitage tells _me_ there’s no other way,” Ren replies tersely, drifting back toward the window. Hux remains the barrier between them.

“For once I’m glad you’re listening to him.” Rey doesn’t smile, and Ren doesn’t respond.

Rey unceremoniously drops her gaze and opens the battered cloth bag on her shoulder. She extracts a shapeless gray cloak, a pair of wide-legged brown trousers, and a long brown belt, and proffers them to Hux in a disheveled ball.

“Put these on. You’ll attract attention in the medical gown.”

Hux takes the garments, disentangling them enough to examine the trousers. They’ll be too wide at the waist, too short in the leg. He holds them up.

“Does Eff...Finn know you’ve brought these?”

Rey straightens. “He does.”

“Does anyone else?”

Rey lifts her eyes to address. The ice crystallizes between them again as she shakes her head, a thin layer over a teeming lake. Hux knows better than to tread on it. His gaze strays to the ‘fresher, where he’ll need to change.

“Shall I just—“ he starts, uncomfortably. _Leave the two of you alone out here?_

“Just hurry,” Rey replies.

Hux does. He hears no sound of voices for the less-than-one-minute it takes to tug the loose trousers on under the gown, then remove the gown entirely and replace it with the cloak Surprisingly, it feels like gaberwool.

He has to cinch the belt tightly around his prominent hips, and he tightens it a final time as he emerges from the ‘fresher’s fluorescents back into the dimness of the moonlit main room.

Rey’s taken a datapad out of her bag, and is scrolling idly through what must be missed chat notifications. Ren is looking out the window, pivoted mostly away from her, but not quite exposing his whole back. Hux hastily folds the gown, places it at the foot of his bed, and slides into his prison-issue rubber clogs, which are stored underneath.

Rey glances up from her datapad. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

Rey casts an inquiring glance at Ren, who’s finally turned around. He nods once, then echoes Hux. Rey powers down her datapad, throwing her face abruptly into shadow.

 

* * *

 

 

Hux’s room is on the second floor of the infirmary, and they take the stairs, a rough-hewn duracrete affair clearly intended primarily as a fire escape.

It’s silent going, with the exception of whispered directions from Rey as they cut through empty white corridors on the ground floor to reach an emergency exit behind the wing’s triage desk. The desk is occupied by a single GH unit, humming quietly in front of a display monitor.

Rey bites her lip, casts a wary glance each way down the corridor, then lifts a hand. With a flick of her wrist, a neglected hovercart begins to drift left across the range of the droid’s optical receptors. The GH unit’s head creaks up, following the rogue cart’s trajectory.

“Where are _you_ going?” they ask the cart, sounding fondly peeved rather than truly curious. But they still move dutifully away from their monitor, out from behind the desk, and in the opposite direction of the emergency exit.

“Come on,” Rey hisses.

Hux and Ren follow, Hux as quiet as possible in the rubber shoes, Ren’s footsteps silent as the grave.

Rey looks the door up and down, then flicks her wrist upward at a black plasteel hemisphere that’s blinking yellow. With a fluid motion, the light goes out, and a soft click resounds from the door’s inner workings.

“There,” she whispers, “disabled.” She tugs on the manual-releasehandle and pulls the door open, ushering Hux and Ren into the night outside.

Hux finds himself across a narrow speeder lane from a complex of four-storey buildings, each a uniquely unpleasant hybrid of cinderblock and durasteel. A high fence of black durasteel spikes rings the complex as far as can be seen, the tips connected by three crackling blue lines of low-grade ion shielding. It wouldn’t stop a blaster bolt, but it would certainly fry a climber. A pedway connects the nearest structure to the infirmary behind Hux and Ren.

“That’s where you were living,” Ren observes.

“For a loose definition of _living_.”

Ren gives a sad huff of laughter before Hux realizes he should be selling this place.

“I exaggerate,” he backtracks. “It could be worse.”

“Yeah, if it were on Hays Minor and overrun by insects.”

Hux hides a smile behind his hand, and hasn’t recovered enough to correct him by the time Rey joins them, sealing the door again with a twitch of her fingers.

“We’re heading for a maintenance warehouse on the base. It’s just a few blocks south from here.”

She nods down the speeder lane in the direction she means, and Hux follows her off the curb and onto the packed earth, Ren behind him.

A breeze ruffles Hux’s hair, loose and long, combed to one side as best he can without product. He brushes it out of his face and tugs the cloak tighter around him, goosebumps rising on his otherwise bare arms.

It’s a cool night, and the air smells earthy, autumnal. Chandrila’s single moon hangs high, a crescent tonight. A few bright stars spackle the deep-blue around it, the base near enough to Hanna City that the sky isn’t fully black.

They pass no other organic life, just a few security droids lingering in front of darkened buildings of the same cinderblock hybrid variety, and the open entrance to a slightly better lit spaceport. Rey gestures at a single roving monitor droid, and its optical receptor goes red, head swiveling the opposite direction. She keeps a brisk pace, tossing an occasional glance over her shoulder, apparently to ensure Hux and Ren haven’t veered off or fallen behind.

Hux manages, though his breathing is somewhat short by the time Rey stops in front of a flat, prismatic structure. A weather-worn sign planted beside the door reads _MAINTENANCE_ , and Rey takes it as a cue to turn around.

“This is us.”

Beside Hux, Ren eyes the sign with distaste. “No security feeds in here, I assume.”

“Only building here like it,” Rey confirms, then approaches the door. She presses a panel beside the doorframe, and whether, she has full access, it simply isn’t coded, or this too is a trick of the Force, the door slides open smoothly.

Rey plunges in first and immediately turns on her datapad. Hux follows the single spot of light inside, even as she’s panning the walls with it, apparently searching for a manual dial for the overhead fluorescents.

“Lights, eighty percent,” Hux says, experimentally.

It works, illuminating a long, low-ceilinged room divided into two ill-defined sections: first an open work area, containing three battered worktables, then aisles of rusty shelves filled with cleaning chemicals, landscaping tools, and spare parts for various janitorial droid models. It smells like they’ve been leaking battery fluid.

Hux raises a hand to his nose as he adjust to the scent, and Ren, who’s entered behind him, gives him a quizzical look. Before Hux can warn him that this probably isn’t optimal air for the newly re-embodied, Rey’s turned to face them. Her bag rests amid the sawdust on the worktable behind her, and her datapad is out of sight.

One of her hands is curled at her side. She glances at Hux, but her gaze rests on Ren.

“If you’re ready to start?”   

“I am.” His voice is surprisingly even. Perhaps this will go more easily than Hux imagined. (But Ren is, of course, a decent liar.)

The anxiety of the past few hours catches up with Hux again, settling heavy into the pit of his stomach, speeding up his heart rate. He works his fingers into the cloak’s hem on instinct, but disentangles them just as quickly. _No fidgeting._ He clasps them behind his back instead, a laughable mime of parade rest.

Rey’s hand remains tight at her side, and Ren cuts her off before she can start giving any instructions.

“Where’s my lightsaber?”

Rey’s brow scrunches. “Your lightsaber?”

And _fuck_ , here it is. The terse cooperation couldn’t possibly last for long.

“As I doubt you could find something more suitable in this system,” Ren retorts.

“You honestly think I’d bind you to something that strong with the Darkness?” Rey’s nearly scoffing, and she’ll probably get away with it. “So you could become even more powerful after death, like the Sith Lords on Moraband?”

“None of your Jedi artifacts will be compatible with Chaos. You have no choice but to take the risk.”

“Everything about this is a risk, Kylo.”

Some of the tension--though none of the stomachache--leaves Hux’s muscles at the sound of Ren’s name. At least she’s finally got that much right. In Hux’s periphery, Ren relaxes too, his jaw no longer locked into place.

“But,” she goes on, “I don’t have to take that particular one.”

She lifts her clenched right fist, flips her wrist, and opens her palm. In the center rests a pair of varnished gold sabacc dice,

Ren’s posture regains all the rigidity of moments ago, and then some. His mouth retreats into a thin line, and even with the tint of his projected form, he’s clearly paler. He fades a bit as well, Hux thinks. Looks bluer at the edges. More light gets through him.

“Are you fucking with me?” He’d sound angrier if his mouth didn’t also sound so dry.

Hux digs his fingernails into the meat of his palm. He has to wait, has to stay calm, has to let this run its course.

“This isn’t what it looks like.”

“This can only be one thing,” Ren retorts.

Rey inhales audibly, and doesn’t break eye contact. “Let me explain--”

“There’s nothing to explain here.” Ren’s volume is ticking up. Odd, that it doesn’t echo in this room. “You truly think I’ll anchor myself to-- to _this_ , and come crawling back to my mother’s house, after all this. You truly think--”

Rey lowers her hand, curling her fingers to conceal the dice again. “I only chose these because they have a presence in the Force without--”

“Is she living in the same place?”  


_Shit._ Hux knows this demanding tone---this tactic, if it can even be called one. The way he talks out of every corner of his mouth in an argument, the way his thoughts run fast and loose, and the point of the conversation drowns in them. How his hackles fly up when he’s afraid.

“What?” Rey replies.

Hux steps forward, reaching out futilely. “Ren--”

Ren shifts away from Hux  without acknowledging him. “I’m sure she is. I’m sure she’s been waiting for this. That’s where you’re going to imprison me, isn’t it?”

“Kylo, I told you she doesn’t know. If you would _listen--_ ” Rey starts, growing terser.

Ren ignores her. “You can tell her _no_ from me. Tell her I’d sooner stay in Chaos.”

“Leia doesn’t know I’m here,” Rey says, slow and deliberate. “Nobody does yet, and I just hope these aren’t missed too much once people find out about this. I brought them because they’re the only thing I could think of that has a personal meaning for you without being inherently stronger with the Dark or the Light. The only presence these have in the Force is...manufactured.”

Ren is just as tense, but his voice does drop an octave. “You want me to believe these are neutral.”

In the calmer, less guarded expression that follows, his concern is obvious: that these, being bound to these somehow, will limit his abilities. Make it harder to get away.

And he’s always been arrogant when it comes to his strength, deluded even, but Chaos must have worsened it. The dual pommels of Rey’s lightsaber glint at her belt, and by comparison, Ren is hardly even real.

“They’re as close to neutral as they can be,” Rey says, “and more importantly, they’re all you’ve got. Can you work with them?”

Ren’s gaze drops to Rey’s closed fist, and he’s silent. The whole room is silent. Hux’s pulse thuds in his ears.

He’s going to throw this away before they’ve even begun, he’s going to disappear, he’s--

“Fine,” Ren says, meeting Rey’s eyes quickly, then turning toward Hux.

His gaze lingers on Hux’s face, probing, yes, but _seeking._ Something. Comfort? Hux has little to give, but he smiles weakly anyway, unsure what it is that Ren will think he’s encouraging.

Ren turns back to Rey. “What’s next?”

“Armitage,” Rey says, without quite acknowledging Ren.

She holds her fist out to him, and Hux extends a hand, just as she instructed. The dice fall heavily onto his palm, the chain clinking down around them. The metal is cool, despite having been nestled next to Rey’s datapad. Hux leaves his hand open, and waits.

“This next part is the part that I--” Rey stops short, shakes her head once, as if to jolt her mind back on track. “It’s going to work out. Kylo, put your hand on top of the dice.”

Ren lifts a hand, as if his first instinct is to obey, but pauses to argue. “You’re aware I can’t feel anything.”

“Yet,” Rey snaps back.

She keeps going once Ren’s complied, his hand hovering over the dice in Hux’s, bleeding into the skin. She curtly explains how Ren’s bond with Hux is to serve as the conduit for his presence in the Living Force, necessary with the dice where it wouldn’t perhaps be with a Darker object. He’s to focus on pouring himself into the dice, the same way he does when he’s projecting himself through the bond.

Afterward, he’ll always have to be under the same roof as them (Hux assumes Rey will deposit them in the penitentiary’s central office, to anchor him there). They’ll bring him back into a normal relationship with space, time, and the Living Force. (Hux assumes that means he’ll age, eventually wear this body out.)

Rey’s role is to channel the energy from both Hux and Ren, corral it if it misfires.

Hux, on the other hand, is to remember. It’s that part that Ren objects to.

“He shouldn’t have to give you something else to do this.”

Hux doesn’t give her a chance to respond. Ren will take it better from him. “If the memories were what... _activated_ the bond in the first place, wouldn’t they also be a solid way to strengthen it? That does follow?”

The questions aren’t strictly necessary, but Ren likes to reassure Hux. After a moment, he does.

“I guess so,” he concedes, but his gaze hardens immediately. “Just don’t make it anything too--”

Intentionally this time, Hux cups the outline of his face with his free hand. “I won’t.”

“Okay.”

  
“Okay,”  Rey echoes.

With a step closer to Hux and Ren, she places her hand on Hux’s wrist, just below the pulse point, as she always does. It leaves the three of them somewhat tangled together: Ren’s hand on top of the dice on top of Hux’s, Rey’s wrist crossing Ren’s to touch Hux’s. She’s an intruder, and by the uncomfortable flit of her eyes to Hux’s, ignoring Ren entirely, she seems to know it. But she recovers quickly enough.

“Shall we start?”  


.

 

.

Night is cooler on Hays Major, but it does nothing for the humidity hanging thick over the mineral sea. It’s loosened Hux’s pomade, and he rakes hair out of his eyes as he descends the shoreline. The wooden ramps seem more far less stable under the light of two new moons and distant stars than they did this morning in full sunlight, hand in hand with Ren.

His unmistakable silhouette already darkens the beach below. He’d commed Hux to say he was here, once he’d bowed out of the obligatory diplomatic evening meal, less an invitation than a statement of fact. Hux has come anyway.

As he steps off the wood and onto the gritty mix of brown sand and fine gravel that forms the beach, Ren turns around, acknowledging him. He inclines his head in a clear beckon to join him by the water.

Hux is somewhat surprised to find him vertical. He’s clad in another training uniform, but clad nonetheless. No sign, either, of a cloak spread on the sand. Hux came down expecting it--stuck lube in his pocket, anticipating Ren would provide something to lie down on.

Instead, he’s standing rod-straight, looking out over the narrow sea as if he can see the mountains on the other side despite the darkness. Saltwater laps over his open-toed sandals, and it takes him a moment to look over at Hux. (Hux has known him nearly a year. He should know by now he can’t predict him.)

“Congratulations on the treaty.”

Hux dips his head to hide his smile. The 1030 talks had lasted well into the evening, but paid off. The Order reigns here now, and its proxy government has leave to finish off the insurgency by whatever means necessary.

“The victory belongs to the Order,” he says, and means it.

Ren snorts. “Is that a line?”

“What?”

“Is it part of your conditioning-- training?” he corrects himself. He looks down long enough to entwine his fingers with Hux’s. “You have to say that if someone tries to compliment you?”

It isn’t--just good etiquette, at times.

Hux doesn’t say so, teases instead. “Only when that someone is clearly after a compliment of their own.”

He jostles Ren’s arm as best he can with their hands clasped. The brief contact with the bare skin, the sculpted and exposed muscle, shouldn’t feel so electric, but Hux is suddenly warmer, even with a breeze coming off the water.

Ren’s lip twitches. The starlight is dim in his hair. “That’s all I get for suggesting that making a fifty percent tribute would benefit the northern tribes?”

“Well--” Hux starts, and isn’t sure how to thank him. Whether he wants to be thanked, as such.

Ren doesn’t let him finish, instead tugs his hand, turns left. “Let’s walk.”

Hux follows, not finished. This puts the sea to his right, and in the quiet moment that follows, Hux simply _breathes_. There’s something fresh in the salt-scent, clean on the wind teasing up the lank ends of his hair.

“I’ll admit you were quite convincing today.”

Hux doesn’t understand Ren’s abilities, has only recently started to believe in them. But he did understand the blankness in the northern envoy’s eyes after Ren explained the required tribute of ore. Did notice the minute twitch of Ren’s gloved hand on the table.

“I’ll even admit,” he goes on, and Ren can read anyone he meets, he’ll catch the levity, “that it’s practical and unique asset to the Order.”

“It’s easy,” Ren says, after a moment--a ventured glance shows his excuse for a smile. “All I have to do is find what they want most. Then I show them how what I want can get them there.”

And he’s chatty tonight, apparently. He tends to be bad with explanations.

Hux runs a persuasive thumb over his knuckles. “So when is it not easy?”

The sand-mix crunches under their feet, and Ren looks up before answering. “With people who really only want one thing.”

“Everyone wants more than one thing.”

“But some people choose one to live for.” Ren’s voice goes somewhat distant, gaze straying to the dark cliffs jutting ahead. “Take you.”

Hux scoffs, though it’s clear what Ren’s getting at. He lets him keep going.

“I’m serious,” Ren replies. “I mean your priorities. I could never talk you out of the Order, no part of you wants that, but--” He pauses, and his voice takes on a benign sort of smugness. “I could talk you into bed with me.”

Hux defeats the argument. “You wouldn’t have to.”

“I know.”

Hux flushes, but doesn’t mind. They walk in silence for a while longer, and the water laps at the stones on the shore. The salt encrusted on the larger ones glitters faintly.

It’s Ren, for once, who picks up the conversation.

“So I know I couldn’t convince you to stay a few more days.”

Ren’s scheduled to travel south with a battalion of troopers in the morning. They’ll spend four days demonstrating tactical solutions for any stubborn insurgents that have mustered in the desert. Hux himself is returning to the _Finalizer._

“I’ll be more use out there,” he says, tilting his chin toward the sky. The battle cruiser is docked ninety kilometers straight up, at the bottom-most edge of the thermosphere. “We’ve got to strategize for the rest of the system.”

“Still,” Ren says, then adds, all too demurely, “I’m sure I could find a task that...suits your skillset.”

Hux laughs. “I wasn’t aware the southern tribes needed weapons designs.”

Ren huffs a laugh of his own. “Fuck off.”

“I’m trying to.”

In answer, Ren stops walking and turns to face Hux, steadying him against his own inertia. He takes Hux’s free hand, presses close to his chest. “Just one day.” No trace of the Force in it,  of _suggestion_ \--he wouldn’t dare. His eyes are pleading, though, strands of hair cling to his sweat-damp forehead, and Hux is fucked. “Take notes. Write a report on the progress. I know Snoke will be interested. Just don’t--”

Hux can’t take it, leans forward to press a chaste kiss against his lips. It’s enough to silence him. Hux cups his face once he pulls back, keeping them nose to nose.

“I--” Hux murmurs, and nuzzles briefly against the tip of Ren’s nose. “--concur.”

Ren doesn’t exactly smile, but his eyes brighten, and-- Something _changes_ in the air between them.

It’s a faint humming, a vibration almost, like a string has been plucked in the back of Hux’s skull. There’s a warmth to it, and a softness, for all it drowns out the ebb of the water on the stones.

Hux rubs at his ears. It sometimes helps against tinnitus.

Ren’s brows knit together. “What?”

“That,” Hux says, and gestures obliquely at the space between their shoulders.

“You can hear it,” Ren observes, sounding oddly satisfied. “Finally.”

“Finally?”

Ren holds his gaze. “Yeah.”

“It’s you, then?”

“Not exactly, but--” Ren closes his eyes for a moment, appearing to concentrate. When he opens them, Hux can hear the sea again.

The thrum, though, remains, less a sound now than a sensation, an entropy buzzing in Hux’s marrow. As Ren drops his right hand and starts walking again, it swells.

Originally, Hux got used to it, but now it crescendos, until Hux’s head is spinning, and he has to pause for a moment, hold his head.

He shuts his eyes, and can’t open them again. There’s a crash of thunder over the sea, in the darkness, and Hux doesn’t remember it. It rattles his whole body until it eventually dies off, leaving the chord behind, louder than ever.

.

 

.

It’s the chord itself that pulls Hux back to reality, ringing in his ears, throbbing through his bones, somehow not bursting every blood vessel in his body.

Or it might be, and he’s dead, and this-- _Ren, all around him_ \--is the last thing he’ll feel before the infinite Nothing: Ren’s Force, Ren’s warmth, Ren’s voice, Ren’s touch--

Ren’s _touch._

Holy fuck. It worked.

“Hux?”

Hux registers warm fingers spanning his bicep before his eyes open. One point of heat in the dark. In the _quiet._ The chord’s gone. He blinks slowly back into blinding fluorescents that he set at eighty percent. They feel dialed to at least one-hundred twenty.

“Hux.”

He blinks again, and Ren’s face comes into focus, chin tipped downward to put them all but nose to nose. He’s close enough for Hux to feel his breath--long, steady inhales, followed by controlled exhales, as if he’s trying his best to catch it.

Fuck, he’s missed it. Ren’s breath.

It’s like a damn spice stim, adrenaline to the head. Hux’s pulse hammers as Ren’s gaze meets his, hand trembles as he reaches to touch Ren’s cheek. To make sure.

His fingers quiver against Ren’s skin--he’s jittery all over--but it’s there-- he’s _here._ Hux’s thumb rests on the corner of his mouth; his hand covers Ren’s cheek.

Ren’s hair brushes the backs of his fingers, and his throat is tightening, and the universe is still, and Hux’s brain is spinning in a hundred directions, a volley of missiles fired simultaneously in different directions, too many _stimuli_ , after so long without, and the only thing that makes it from his frontal lobe to the tip of his tongue is, “You’re so warm.”

It’s shaky and choked-up and miserably inadequate, of course, but Ren smiles. A real smile with teeth, not just the sad, wry quirk of the lip.

“I know,” he murmurs, and pulls Hux toward him.

Hux settles into him, relaxing against his chest. He’s solid and warm, unbelievably substantial, and his arms are around Hux’s waist, pulling him close. Hux can’t stand it. He slips his left hand down Ren’s cheek to his neck and raises his right arm to meet it, still holding tight to the dice.

Hux kneads his fingers into the soft gaberwool of his tunic, closes his eyes and breathes him in. He smells vaguely metallic, like the scent of blood, or merely his father’s dice. Hux could get high on it.

The tip of his nose presses into Hux’s neck, colder than the rest of him, and tears already dampen the skin there. He’s shaking in Hux’s arms, sobs catching in his throat. Hux rubs his back, his shoulder, lets his own tears fall silently.

Between shuddering breaths, Ren pulls him tighter, turns his head to press his lips to Hux’s neck. His mouth lingers there for a moment, still, almost passive, no sucking or biting. Like the contact itself is enough for him.

It isn’t enough.

Hux slips his free hand up into Ren’s hair, then moves his head so his lips nearly brush Ren’s ear.

“Let me kiss you.”

“Please.”

Ren lifts his head and pulls back enough to align his lips with Hux’s, then crush them against Hux’s, voracious. It takes a second for Hux to respond, startled with the force of him. He’s sucking at Hux’s lower lip, biting fit to bruise. Hux tugs lightly at his hair, tipping his head back enough that he lets go, allowing Hux full access to his mouth.

He tastes incredible, full lips slick, already swelling. Hux slides his tongue between them into the heat of his mouth, tasting everything, relearning the lines there. He kisses him till he’s breathless, ears ringing with something besides the chord, and then pulls back.

Ren’s breathing hard, too, but that smile is back on his reddened lips. He rests his forehead against Hux’s, closes his eyes. Hux can’t. He’s counting the moles as tears prickle his eyes again.

Ren’s real. He’s here. He’s made of fucking _matter_. The blue halo has faded, and the essence of him that Hux couldn’t live without has latched onto this beautiful thing made of carbon and sulfur and seventy percent water, and there isn’t a part of him Hux doesn’t want to touch.

Hux’s body heat has finally warmed the dice, and his right hand remains curled between Ren’s shoulder blades. He doesn’t want to drop the dice, and he doesn’t want to think about it.

About what comes next.

“Armitage.”

Rey’s voice is calm, imploring. What’s next is here, and Hux would rather feign ignorance, press his lips to Ren’s again (his breath is so warm right now), and make Rey pry the dice from his fingers. Make her fight him. He could take her. He feels invincible.

But the sane part of him knows he can’t put this off forever. The battery scent is starting to layer over Ren’s, and they can’t make out in a maintenance warehouse for the rest of eternity. This comes first. Hux drops his arms, kisses Ren’s cheek.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, but turns away before he can meet Ren’s eyes, or let the hurt and confusion there cloud his judgment.

He lifts his arm again and opens his palm. Holds out the dice to Rey, whose taken--or perhaps been thrown--a few steps back. Still winded, she reaches for them without moving, calling them to her hand with unsteady fingers.

They rise from Hux’s grasp, as if suddenly averse to gravity, but they don’t move toward Rey’s outstretched hand. Instead, the chain goes taut between them, the two cubes perfectly level and the tiny links straining.

Hux doesn’t have to turn around to realize what’s happened, but he does so anyway. Ren’s own hand is held lower than Rey’s, palm up, as if beckoning the dice rather than tugging them away. His jaw is set, rigid with exertion and concentration, his arm still.

“Ren.” Hux isn’t sure what else to say, but tries to make it sound like a reprimand. He’s going to ruin all of this. For once he _needs_ to give up. “Ren, please.”

“I told you I won’t stay here” Ren’s gaze doesn’t leave the dice, and his voice is low, strained. “I was under the impression you believed me.”

“I wanted to believe you, it’s simply that--” Hux starts.

Rey interrupts him. “You have no other options.”

Her focus remains steady, as well, but she’s breathing harder than Ren, which would be stranger if he weren’t freshly re-embodied, whereas she’s spent the last hour exerting herself.

“Let go,” she says, and sounds commanding despite--or perhaps because of--the raggedness of her voice.

Ren remains silent, flicks his index and middle finger inward, an unmistakable beckon. The chain ripples, the die on his end straining harder against Rey’s pull. It merely twitches, though. Accomplishes nothing but to answer her.

“I don’t want to hurt you, not after all this.” Rey cuts her eyes at Hux. “Either of you.”

“You won’t,” Ren says.

“She can, Ren.” Hux sets a hand on his upturned wrist. Ren flinches, but doesn’t falter. “Don’t test her.”

“Last I checked, you wanted me to fight her as hard as I could. You sure as hell weren’t siding with her.”

How can he not see what’s going to happen here? Can he not--for once in his life--go down without theatrics?

Hux swallows, curls his fingers around Ren’s wrist, demanding attention. “I’m not _siding with her_. I’m simply...making a calculated withdrawal. If you haven’t noticed, we lost.”

“You’re quite hung up on that,” Ren drawls, still without looking at Hux.

“Because I happen to be dealing in reality!”

Maddeningly, Ren’s lip quirks at the outburst. “There’s nothing more real than this.”

He makes that beckoning gesture again with all four fingers, and while the chain doesn’t give, the whole suspended line moves perhaps a centimeter closer to him.

Rey’s muscles strain, but she addresses Ren through it. “Armitage did tell you about our agreement?”

Hux’s pulse--which hasn’t quite calmed down between the Force and the kiss and now this--spikes again. “I mentioned it,” he answers for Ren, then clarifies, “The shared cell.”

Ren’s lips thin. “That isn’t enough.”

“It has to be.” Hux steps in front of him, forcing eye contact, and drops his voice. “It’s enough for me.”

Ren holds his gaze for a moment, then blinks, once, twice. Too quickly. “You’re settling for this.”

“It isn’t settling if it’s with you,” Hux blurts back, before he can stop himself.

Ren’s lips tremble, gaze flickers, but he quickly recovers. “I can’t stay here.”

“And I can’t stay here without you. I already tried.”

Hux is acutely aware of Rey’s eyes on them, like a sixth sense behind his back, but she’s silent. Letting him do the work. It doesn’t matter. She’s background noise. He keeps at it.

“Surely I’m better than Chaos?” Hux doesn’t mean for it to sound so broken, or for his voice to crack, or to _mean it._

“And you deserve better than this.” Ren pulls the dice closer. “Even if you don’t want it any more.”

Rey tugs the dice toward her with a sharp inhale, and Ren loses the space he just gained. Hux glances over his shoulder.

Rey’s breathing has leveled out, and her gaze has hardened. The chain is incredibly tight. They’re going to tear it link from link, and if the thing Ren’s bound to is destroyed, it may not take Rey’s lightsaber to disembody him again.

Hux’s heart has made its way into the back of his throat, and he swallows down, trying to think past the pounding in his ears.

Ren beckons the dice again, but leaves his fingers curled for a moment, teeth working into his lower lip with the effort.

“Don’t do this for _me_ , Ren.” Hux’s voice is fragile in his own ears. “I’d be happy with you in a four-by-four cell. If you losing you taught me anything, it was that I don’t need anything else.”

“Hux.” There’s a warning in it. “Stop.”

Hux can’t. Not yet.

“I love you, damnit.”

And it’s there, finally, the core of Hux exposed, like ripping a scab. It stings as the skin peels back. Hux feels raw, naked, his whole body one single pinched nerve, and his heart hammering in his ears, thrashing itself against his ribcage like it wants to break out.

Ren’s fist uncurls, muscles slacken. The dice don’t move, but the chain looks a degree less close to snapping. Ren’s eyes shimmer unmistakably, and this is _it_.

He’s going to fall into Hux’s arms crying again, like always. Perhaps Rey will let them hold each other a bit longer before she returns him to his hospital room, and takes Ren to the prison and locks the dice up there, tethering him to that building, this planet, Hux’s side.

Any second now.

“Hux--” Ren starts, voice splintering.

Any second--

“Get out.”

“What?”

Ren’s gaze goes flinty before he turns it entirely back to the dice, stiffens his arm again, tugs the dice with a pained inhale. They move closer than ever, finally dipping downward toward his fingertips. They’re suspended diagonally now, and Rey’s chest is heaving.

“I said, get out of here.”

“Armitage isn’t going anywhere,” Rey counters.

Ren ignores her, lifts his left arm briefly. There’s a whir from the entrance. “Hux. The door’s open. Get out.”

“Ren, I can’t.”

“Armitage, _don’t._ ”

“Go.”

And Hux would argue again, fight this _dismissal_ after he just skinned himself alive for Ren’s benefit.

But Ren turns his head just briefly, and his eyes are tearful, yes, but keen, alert. _Trust me._ Hux isn’t sure if he reads it there, or it’s inside his own skull.

Ren says nothing aloud, and this is madness, this is ridiculous, this is-- a diversion tactic.

And Ren’s going to destroy himself if Hux doesn’t play along. That leaves Hux with nothing to lose.

He’s mere meters from the door and turns toward it, moving behind Ren’s back with deliberate strides.

  
“Armitage.”

Rey’s voice is a warning, but Hux can’t stop moving, propelled as if by some energy external to himself. He’s close enough to the open door to feel a breeze from it, to watch moonlight glance off another patrol droid in the lane outside.

The artificial lighting from the warehouse bleeds over the threshold, and Hux is _close,_ two steps from the door, when it whirs shut in front of him, slamming against the opposite frame.

In the echo of it, he hears the clink of metal on metal, the soft thud of a small object on skin. He turns back, and the dice rest in Ren’s half-closed palm.

He isn’t quite smiling, but his eyes are bright, like he’s just had a lucky break in the sabacc they’re made for. Or like he’s just cheated and won, and no one can do a damn thing about it.

“Hux,” he says, without taking his eyes off Rey, “I told you to go.”

Rey does look at Hux, even as her hand strays to her lightsaber. She slips it blindly out of her belt, and she’s looking at Hux like he’s the only thing stopping her from using it.

The air in the room feels charged, too thick, crackling with electricity on some dimension just above Hux’s awareness. It raises gooseflesh on his arms.

“Armitage, please.”

Her voice is level, but her eyes are desperate. She doesn’t want to do this. _Help me save him._

A part of Hux wants to, but-- _Trust me._

It reverbs through Hux’s skull.

Ren’s saving himself.

Hux holds Rey’s gaze. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I have to.”

Rey purses her lips, gaze softening, dropping, for an instant. Then she offers him the familiar sad smile. It isn’t permission, simply understanding. It passes, and she’s iron again.

Hux’s hands are still shaking, but he steadies them enough to punch the manual release for the door. It slides open, and he crosses back out into the night.

The wind’s picked up and the moon descended slightly since they went into the warehouse. The door slides shut behind Hux with a click, and on instinct, he puts his back to it, making for the speeder lane, aimless.

His pulse pounds, and his stomach is in knots, and _what the fuck did you just do_ blares through his brain like a corrupted hologram, on loop.

He left Ren in there with _her,_ after all this, and for all Ren’s strength, and for all Rey’s winded, she’s got a dual-bladed lightsaber, and he has a battered pair of dice.

_Trust him trust him trust him trust him_

There’s nothing Hux can do-- _could do_ for him--this is Ren’s fight, always has been--but he shouldn’t have left him behind, should have let her run him through as well, like he’s been dreaming of for months. He still can.

He’s set one foot on the packed earth of the speeder lane when he decides to turn back. When--before he’s fully pivoted--a massive crunching sound, followed by a ground-shaking _boom_ resounds from the warehouse’s direction.

On inertia, he finishes turning to face it. Stops dead between the duracrete of the walkway and the unpaved lane. Can’t breathe anymore.

The roof of the warehouse has caved in on the near side, where Ren and Rey are, or _were_ , at least. The two sides of it bow inward in a deep _V_ , as if a straight and invisible beam crushed it from above.

Dust and what must be clouds of leaking chemicals rise off of it into the night air like a ghastly mist. The door has been shoved forward to dangle off its track, and the far edge curls outward, its durasteel blackened. Somewhere inside, under the rubble, a klaxon blares.

“Ren!” It sounds more like a reprimand than actually calling out for him--Hux knows only one person dead or alive who would do something this thoughtless.

Emotion rises in his throat again, and he feels frozen to the spot. Some distant part of his mind knows it’s only a matter of time before every monitor droid and half the sentient guards surround the warehouse, clap him in binders, and demand a rational explanation he doesn’t have.

They’ll put him back in his hospital room and move him back to his cell soon, and  
Rey won’t be back to restore his and Ren’s bond like she did before. He’ll be staring down the barrel of decades again, coming up with increasingly innovative suicide plans until something finally _works._

The dust starts to settle on the strip of grass in front of the warehouse, and the alarm fizzles out. No one’s coming yet. He turns to look up and down the speeder lane and realizes his vision is blurry with tears. He scrubs at his eyes. The silhouettes of the prison fence, the infirmary, and the spaceport come into focus northward.

He’s hardly had time to register the growing point of light that is an approaching monitor droid when a harsh scraping sound, like metal on brick, pulls his attention back toward the warehouse.

The dilapidated door is moving, bending to one side to widen the opening between it and the crooked frame. Hux scrubs at his eyes again, and Ren himself resolves into view. Pale and unsteady, his hair streaked with gray lines of dust, but very much whole. Very much solid.  
His left hand is clenched in a tight fist; one of the dice dangles out of it.

It’s as if a millstone has been lifted off of Hux’s insides. He can breathe again.

He all but jogs up the pavement to meet him, and immediately cups his face, tracing a thumb through the gray residue clinging to perspiration on his skin. Ren relaxes into his touch, breathing hard.

“What did you do?” Hux’s voice is embarrassingly ragged, but he can’t bring himself to care. Can barely keep himself from grinning like mad.

“Made an out.”

Ren doesn’t look back, but Hux sobers as his gaze falls over his shoulder to the left of the rent, where Rey was. “Where is she?”

“She’ll be fine.” Ren lays his hand over Hux’s on his cheek for a moment, then gently pries it off, lacing his fingers through it instead. “Come on.”

 

* * *

 

They hit the monitor droid about two buildings from the spaceport, or more correctly, Ren hits it.

Two buildings from the spaceport, it drifts toward them, swiveling head aiming photoreceptors to their left. Ren doesn’t give it a chance to analyze the shadow of the building they’re walking in. He lifts a hand and flicks his wrist, as Rey did to deter a similar unit earlier tonight.

Chaos, though, has apparently not refined his sense for the delicate, and the cam-laden head snaps off, row of blue lights blinking out before it hits the ground.

“Fuck,” Ren hisses, “someone will see that’s offline.”

Hux tries not to laugh as Ren tugs him along, strides quickened with fresh urgency. “I’ve missed your destructive tendencies,” he says, sing-song but still somewhat short of breath.

Ren cracks a smile. “Thank you.”

It’s less than five minutes to the spaceport’s open entrance. Between the gap in the high fencing, Hux picks out hree asymmetrical rows of various cargo transports, a few token X- and Y- wings, and a fleet of sublight speeders equipped with sirens.

A shuttered guardhouse stands just inside, to Hux and Ren’s right, but the field isn’t entirely vacant. Two narrow yellow beams--unmistakably from glowrods--arc along the ground. One’s getting closer.

Hux follows Ren through the gap and up alongside the guardhouse in silence, then emulates him when he turns, presses his back against the cinderblock. Hux’s spine digs into the bricks through the cloak’s thin fabric, and he tightens his grip on Ren’s hand.

He has no reason to worry, though, he reminds himself, drumming his fingers against Ren’s knuckles.  Where he would have feared for his life three hours ago--convinced that the Ren that came back to him would be somehow _lessened_ \--he’s now seen Ren (the same Ren, he’s always the same Ren) take down a building while hardly breaking a sweat, disable a droid with a flick of his wrist.

These guards are nothing, the locks on these transports are nothing, this planet’s atmosphere is nothing, the warrants that are sure to be out for them before dawn are nothing. Ren is the only substantial thing in the universe, and his fingers are locked with Hux’s.

“Hold on,” he murmurs as the swinging beam draws closer.

Hux’s breath still catches slightly when it falls across his feet, pans up to his face, blinding him momentarily.

“Hey--” starts the guard, in an accent like Ren’s, local, but gets no further.

A sweep of Ren’s arm dashes them against the side of the guardhouse, sends their glowrod clattering out of their hand. It blinks out. As Hux’s vision readjusts, their crumpled body comes into focus, the unnatural angle of their neck, and the thin trickle of bluish blood running from the corner of their mouth.

Hux turns to Ren. “Shit. You didn’t even have to choke them.”

“Chaos. Anchored in complete darkness.” Ren’s smile is the usual smug affair, and Hux can’t get enough of it.

He steps out from the wall enough to face Ren completely. “I thought these were supposed to constrain that.” He rests his hand on the pocket of Ren’s tunic, where he stowed the dice once they got moving.

Ren actually shrugs, and it’s ridiculous. He’s ridiculous. “They can only do so much.”

Hux shouldn’t still feel like laughing, but it’s bubbling up inside him, irrepressible, and he’ll make a goddamn racket if he isn’t careful. He smothers himself as best he can; he kisses Ren.

Ren responds ravenously, lets Hux lick at the inside of his mouth, working his fingers through Hux’s loose hair. Hux slots his hips against Ren’s, nudges Ren’s legs apart with his own almost instinctively, forgetting himself in the hardening line of Ren’s cock, and his own answering arousal. He grinds against Ren, and Ren all but ruts against him in response, and Hux wants nothing more than to--

Breathe.

He pulls back, ears ringing, disoriented. Ren chases his lips for a moment, before leaning back, seeming to return to himself, as well.

“Save it for hyperspace?” Hux breathes.

Ren smiles. “Deal.”

 

* * *

 

Emerging from the shadow of the guardhouse is less walking into full light than into something vaguely grayer. The moonlight, as well as the beams of haphazardly-placed lightposts, glints dully off the hulls of the transports. Hux and Ren keep to their shadows as much as possible, Hux’s hand going sweaty in Ren’s.

They duck under the wing of a starfighter as the arc of the second guard’s glowrod sweeps the neighboring aisle, the being themself still out of sight.

“Which one are we headed toward?” Hux hisses once it’s passed, nodding toward the larger transports further down.

“That T-1 should work.” Ren gestures to a sleek model with two sets of wings toward its stern, clearly built for speed.

They make for it, faster now, Hux’s hand beginning to stick to Ren’s with sweat. He doesn’t let go.

 

* * *

 

Beside the ship, Ren examines the silvered hull for hatches, running a hand over it carefully, like he’s testing it for solidity. Hux keeps his back to the shuttle, on lookout. The second guard’s glowrod swings wide in the next aisle, just a few ships up from this one.

“How’s it coming?” Hux hisses. He’s never been patient, but that’s beside the point: he’d rather not risk exposure to a second armed guard, particularly with Ren’s focus on something besides his personal safety.

“I have to be--” Ren slowly pulls his hand back, keeping it a controlled distance from the durasteel. “--delicate.”

“ _Can_ you?”

The image of the broken monitor droid flits across the surface of his mind. He imagines that kind of power inflicted on a massive object with a full tank of highly combustible hypermatter. Steps involuntarily backward.

But Ren appears unfazed, pulls his hand deftly down mid-air. Stops. A click resounds from somewhere inside the ship, and the outline of an entrance emerges in the hull.

“When I want to be, apparently.”

The full hatch extends, hitting the landing pad with a dull clunk. In Hux’s periphery, the glowrod beam swings. Footsteps pound the permacrete, and before Hux can fully register them, Ren’s shoving him onto the ladder, following close behind.

It’s dark inside the ship, but the yellow beam catches between the hull and the hatch as Ren pulls it shut without touching it. Hux calls for lights, and they come up, fortunately responsive to an unfamiliar voice. Hux meets Ren’s eyes--his gaze steady, somehow--before following him aft to the cockpit.

Ren takes the pilot’s chair, and Hux the co-pilot’s seat beside it. Ren’s already swearing at the controls, tapping and turning and gesturing like he’s overriding some aspect of the programming with the Force. Hopefully he won’t shatter it in the process.

A glance out the viewport shows the second guard, finger pressed to an ear comm, the other holding a drawn blaster.

“Get the shields up,” Hux orders, before the guard releases the ear comm, raises their other hand, and fires.

Ren lifts his left hand, suspending the bolt while he fumbles with the controls with his right. Hux surveys the display that’s lit up in front of him--it takes two taps to raise the shields.

The bolt zings off of it, and Ren returns his full attention to getting the shuttle off the ground. The motivator sets the whole ship thrumming, and the thrusters whir to life with a roar.

Ren folds his hand over the throttle, pulls back, and the shuttle lurches off the ground.

The rows of darkened shuttles, then the penitentiary building, then the entire military complex shrink rapidly, shapeless gray forms marked only by the slow blinking of rooftop lights. Ren says nothing, hands taut on the yoke, and Hux glances at the readout in front of him. It’s flashing emergency-red.

“Fuck, they’ve got planetary defenses engaged.”

(Of course they do, after Starkiller.)

The shields will only be penetrable with a callsign, and there’s no time for invention, delay, suspicion, scrutiny.

Ren’s right hand creeps toward the throttle again.

Hux purses his lips. “What are you doing?”

“Bypassing them. Hold on.”

The ship accelerates dangerously for a moment, bucking backward at a steep angle. The motivator hums madly. Chandrila’s constellations blur into the sky, and Hux blinks.

When he opens his eyes, the stars have blurred entirely, streaking horizontally around the viewport. The motivator has died down to its expected thrum, and Ren’s tapping at his console, engaging autopilot.

It’s then that Hux realizes he’s shaking again. Chandrila’s behind him, somehow ( _for now_ , warns a voice, but he stifles it)--the binders, the cell, the artificial rations, the supervised showers, the immutable _cold_.  It’s done (and at least while the hyperfuel lasts, he and Ren are safe, suspended between realities).

“You okay?” Ren’s swiveled the pilot’s chair toward him.

“Yes, I--” Hux starts, “yes, it’s just-- _over_.”

“It is.”

“Thank you.”

Ren didn’t have to bring Hux along. Hux, who hadn’t even believed he could manage this.

Ren glances at his boots, scuffs the toe against the polished floor, then looks back up at Hux.  “I wasn’t going to leave you,” he says, thickly. “Not again.”

Hux swallows, repeats _thank you_ again, like an idiot.

Ren’s legs are stretched comfortably in front of him, too long, distracting.

 

* * *

  

Within a minute, Hux is in his lap.

Within fifteen, Ren’s found medical-grade lubricant in a kit stowed between the cockpit and the main deck.

Within thirty, Hux’s borrowed cloak and Ren’s perfectly solid clothing are strewn across the floor of the claustrophobic cabin attached to the cockpit, and Hux has propped himself up over Ren’s bare chest, his mouth on Ren’s left nipple.

Ren moans as he licks a whorl around it, sweat-sticky skin pebbling under his tongue, but flinches as Hux clamps his teeth around the peaked tip, hard enough to mark.

Hux lets up, lifts his head. “All right?” he asks, forgiveness, not permission.

““Perfect,” Ren says, then kneads his ass. His hand, resting there, spans nearly the entire cheek. (It fits.)

Hux’s cock responds to the pressure and the notion, hardening further between Hux’s hip and Ren’s thigh. As best he can from this angle, on this narrow bunk, Hux shifts up Ren’s body to let him feel it, bringing them face to face. Ren’s own erection presses hot against Hux’s stomach.

His eyes are starving when they meet Hux’s, desperate, but he speaks low, a soft smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“I like your hair like this.” He reaches up to tuck a lock of it behind Hux’s ear.

Hux laughs despite himself. “What, entirely dishevelled?”

“Suits you.”

Before Hux can object, Ren tips his head up to catch Hux’s lips between his own. He kisses as intently as he did in the warehouse, at the spaceport--hell, as he did on the day he died--but there’s something languid in his pace now. Indulgent.

Hux moves into it, swinging a leg across to straddle Ren as he sits up further, taking control of the kiss, biting. Hux’s mouth is going to be as marked as Ren’s chest, and he couldn’t care less.

When Ren finally pulls back, catching his breath, Hux’s own chest is heaving, and he’s all but in Ren’s lap, Ren’s hand cupping the back of his skull. He lets them part enough to breathe, keeps their foreheads touching. His smile has inched into _smug_ territory, but there’s only warmth in his voice, soft still, yet with an unmistakable touch of need.

“Did you plan on mouthing at my chest all night, or are we gonna fuck?”

Hux, of course, would gladly mouth at Ren’s tits for the rest of his life, but isn’t ready to say so. He pecks at Ren’s nose before answering.

“I was _planning_ to ride you.”

“Fuck yes.”

Ren still isn’t sitting all the way up, shoulders braced against the wall behind him, and he shifts lower again as he turns, groping for the lube. It’s been knocked backward in their fumbling, wedged between the bunk’s frame and the paneling. Hux takes the bottle from him before he can get the cap off.

Ren’s cock is full between them, the underside flushed deep red, and if Hux doesn’t touch it,  he’ll lose his mind.

“Let me.” He unscrews the cap, squeezes a sizeable amount into his palm, and inches back enough to get at Ren’s cock, Ren’s legs flattening underneath him

Ren shudders as his slick fingers wrap around it, and he gives a shallow thrust into Hux’s grip, as if involuntarily. Hux’s own cock pulses with interest, suddenly heavy, aching. He works more quickly, his hand less than steady around Ren’s shaft.

Ren holds still as best he can, but his fingers work into the sheets, and every other move Hux makes is punctuated by, _“Fuck, Hux_ ," _“Shit_ ,” and finally a breathless, “Fuck, I thought you wanted me to come inside you.”

Hux can’t quite tease him for being easy; Hux feels on edge himself, all but untouched. What he does is squeeze a final bit of lube onto his thumb, smear it generously across Ren’s tip, then trace beneath his foreskin, drier against the sensitive flesh.

Ren hisses a breath in response, swears again. “Tell me you’re done.”

“With you.”

Hux doesn’t waste much time opening himself up, contorts just enough to spread his hole, trace some lube around his rim. Ren’s gaze devours him the whole time, holds Hux’s when he’s finished.

“Do you want me sitting up or lying back?”

Hux hardly hears him over the blood pounding in his ears, in his skull, in his cock. “Lying back,” he manages, belatedly, “if that isn’t too--” _Selfish,_ he can’t say.

Ren cuts him off, wearing a slightly prouder expression. “Good. I get to watch you come apart on my dick.”

“Fuck you,” Hux says, biting down to hide his smile. He places both hands on Ren’s pecs, nudging him slightly further down. When he draws back, his right one, lubed up, leaves a sheen high on his tit.

Hux inches back again, lining himself up with Ren’s cock, and sinks down onto him. Centimeter by centimeter, it takes an eternity. It hurts--he’s out of practice, never bothered fingering himself in prison. (It wasn’t worth the effort; nothing could compare to this.)

He can’t help the short, strangled, breathless moans that escape him as he mounts Ren, takes him, all of him, stretched impossibly wide. Tears prickle at the corners of his eyes, and he feels green, far younger than his thirty-five years.

It feels incredible, though, once he’s seated.

“Feel okay?” Ren asks, as if there were something he could do about it. He’s hoarse, breathless, eyes dark and drinking Hux in.

“Yes, fuck yes.” He hardly gets it out around the lump in his throat. This is all he’s thought about for six months, and he can’t even fucking move.

He shifts again, and Ren’s hips buck up into him, a thrust of sorts, striking alarmingly near his prostate. A shudder of pleasure rocks his bloodstream, tunnels his vision.

He rolls his hips in response, and mechanically moves his hand toward his cock to stroke himself.

“Let me,” Ren says, before he can touch himself.

“What--” Hux starts, and then he feels it: invisible fingers around his shaft: thick, long, unmistakably callused.

Ren’s right hand clutches at the sheets, but loosens slightly, moves in time with the Force around Hux’s cock. He hasn’t forgotten the rhythm Hux likes, the rough pace, the soft strokes with the pad of his thumb. Hux’s pulse is roaring in his ears, cock throbbing, bobbing in front of him, still technically untouched. He’s close, and he still hasn’t even started fucking _moving_ \--

“Fuck,” he says, breath catching in his throat, “why didn’t you do this--” He sucks in another harsh breath as Ren massages his tip. “--eight years ago?”

“You wouldn’t have appreciated it.”

He’s right, of course, and in lieu of arguing Hux shifts up and slams down onto him again. Ren huffs a harsh exhale as he does so, but matches the rhythm of his strokes to the pace Hux sets.

Within a few movements, Hux is riding him in earnest, stretched taut, eyes closed, Ren’s hand around his cock, Ren’s cock deep inside him. Ren thrusts up into him, each tilt of his hips knocking the breath out of Hux. He couldn’t stop if he wanted to.

Somewhere far-off he hears his own voice, telling Ren he feels good, telling him _“fuck, fuck, fuck, I missed this,”_ crying out. Hears Ren’s moans, his endearments.

Hux’s climax builds with each movement, and there’s pressure in his throat, his chest, his groin. His breath is shallow, loud in his own ears.

“I’m close, Ren,” he manages, opening his eyes long enough to take in Ren’s hair fanned on the pillow behind him, Ren’s chest heaving, fingers working into the sheets, guiding the Force around Hux’s cock. “I’m close, I-- _fuck_ \--” The word dissolves into a wordless shout, carnal and involuntary.

He’s coming onto his stomach, hot, sticky. It’s sliding down him, and he doesn’t care. Ren fucks him through it, but his own orgasm hits two thrusts in, and his come is warm inside Hux, filling him even as Ren’s cock softens.

They’re both finished before he registers the sticky tracks on his cheeks, the saltwater catching in the corners of his mouth. He scrubs at the tears, but it’s too late--Ren’s seen them.

“Come here.”

Hux obeys silently, letting Ren’s cock slip out of him as he lowers himself onto Ren’s chest again. Ren’s release is leaking out of him, and his own sticks to Ren’s stomach as he settles on top of it. But the bed is narrow. There’s nowhere else to go.

The tears should stop once his head is pillowed on Ren’s pec, but they don’t. Ren holds him, one arm around his shoulders, the other in his hair.

“I’m sorry about this,” he says, rubbing futilely at his eyes, sniffing. “You didn’t come back from the dead to watch me blub.”

Ren hushes him, presses his lips to Hux’s temple. “I came back for _you_.”

Somewhere between the gentle rhythm of Ren’s fingers over his scalp and post-coital exhaustion, Hux’s eyes fall shut.

 

* * *

 

Hux awakens, disoriented, to the somehow unfamiliar thrum of a ship’s motivator. He can’t be  in hyperspace, he’s in the infirmary, at the prison, on Chandrila. He’s--

He blinks into full alertness, rubs at his eyes. The room around him resolves into the gray paneling of a passenger shuttle’s walls. Of a cramped pilot’s cabin. The T-1. (The escape.)

It rushes back over him like a riptide, confirmed by the sharp soreness in his ass and the stale sex-scent of dried come on his chest.

He’s alone in the narrow bunk, and a chrono mounted across from it reads 0605 standard. He didn’t notice it last night, and has no idea how long he slept. Ren’s side of the bed is still faintly warm. Hux rolls onto it, spotting a folded cloth on the lone nighttable next to it.

The cloth is damp and clean, room temperature, likely having cooled since Ren left it. Hux tries to take it to his filthy torso, but stops short, just holding it, trying to process the fact that Ren _left it_ . That Ren cares, that Ren is _here_ , and all evidence points to the fact that Hux hasn’t just lost his mind. He blinks back tears again, and hates himself for them.

After a moment, he manages to use the cloth, scrubbing his soiled chest and stomach pink and raw.

With effort, he swings his legs over the side of the bed, wincing for his soreness as he stands, then shuffles across the room and bends to retrieve his briefs and the shed gray cloak.

He doesn’t mind the pain. Without it, he’d be wondering when he’ll wake up.

He doesn’t bother with his undershirt or the borrowed pants, just wraps the cloak tight around him against the chill of the shuttle. He lopes into the cockpit, where white streaks still blur across the nothingness outside the viewport.

The motivator is a little louder in here, but Ren swivels toward Hux before he’s set both feet in the room, aware of him all the same. He smiles with both corners of his mouth, dimpling his chin.

“Morning.”

“Morning.” Hux runs a self-conscious hand through his hair before moving toward him.

It takes just two steps in the compact cabin to put him in Ren’s personal space. He bends to press a kiss to the crown of Ren’s head. It feels natural already. Chandrila seems centuries ago.

It shouldn’t.

Hux wraps an arm around Ren’s headrest, maneuvering behind him as Hux himself gestures to the console readouts. He has to ask. To know.

“Are they after us yet?”

Ren tips his head back to meet Hux’s gaze. His eyes look huge from this angle. “I don’t know what Rey told them, but--” He leans forward and taps the central display to pull up a newsfeed in holograph blue, then ducks his chin back again. “--we’re free.”

This time, Hux looks past him, holding his breath.

Two headlines stripe the screen:

_Hanna City Naval Base: Pirates suspected in explosion, shuttle theft, slain guard_

_Former Grand Marshal Armitage Hux reported dead in New Republic custody_

Free. Hux’s hand strays first to his mouth, then drops to stroke Ren’s hair.

Free. His brain is numb, overworked, unable to process this.

“She must have really wanted rid of us,” Ren offers, after a moment.

Yes, that. And the need to cover up her own illegal dealings with regard to the two of them. But something else. The soft thing in Rey’s eyes, the sympathy-- _stars, you really are in love with him_ . ( _“I have to,”_ he’d told her in the warehouse, and read in her smile, _“I know.”)_

“Of me going on about you,” is what Hux says aloud, teasing. “You’re welcome.”

He crosses the cockpit to take the co-pilot’s seat, lowering himself gently. A glance left shows Ren’s smile, and the dice resting on the steering column.

And Hux should ask a thousand questions, start making plans, giving _orders._ Should go explore the stern of the cabin and take a sonic. He can’t.

Ren’s smiling, and space is infinite around them, and somehow, this is enough.


	13. Epilogue: Looking to the Horizon

**Six months later**

Hux awakens to the low whine of speeders, rush-hour traffic in the lane several storeys below his and Ren’s apartment. The gray light of a foggy morning filters in through cracked blinds, and the chill of it has seeped into the single room and under the thin blanket covering them. Hux pulls Ren closer for warmth, his chest flush against Ren’s back, and presses his lips to Ren’s neck.

“Morning,” Ren’s voice is soft, but clear and alert. “About time you joined me.”

Hux nips, just a little, recompense for the teasing, then lifts his head, resting his chin on Ren’s shoulder. “How long have you been awake?”

“I don’t know. It was dark.”

Hux hums, nuzzles at his ear. “And you haven’t seen fit to get up?”

“Can’t.” Ren lifts Hux’s hand from his own chest, presses his lips to the knuckles.

But it isn’t quite enough to distract Hux from the jolt of anxiety. He hasn’t shaken it, though it’s been six months since Ren’s initial bout of near-unconsciousness, just after they’d finally made planetfall in the Outer Rim.

Twice out of bed in three days, Hux half-mad, watching him, unable to leave the motel room, and touching him periodically. He’d been convinced the bond to the dice had broken, that Ren was stuck in some kind of limbo between worlds.

The first day he paced, the second day he drank, and the third day he thought until he cried, and Ren woke up. Then they both drank, both cried, and fucked three times before check-out at 1100.

Next stop was _here_ , and it hasn’t recurred, but Hux has to ask. To try to ask.

“Are you-- Is everything…?”

Ren huffs a soft laugh. Something like fond. “Just comfortable.”

Good.

Hux smiles, makes sure Ren can hear it. “In that case you could have at least made tea. Or finished packing.”

“What time do we have to be out again? Ten?”

“I think so.” Hux pulls his gaze from the back of Ren’s head to survey the floor, catalog the row of packed crates lining the opposite wall. “There isn’t much left to do.”

There wasn’t much to pack to begin with, though they’ve acquired at least the essentials over their months in the city. Work at the local speeder plant has proved useful enough for anonymity--welding masks are part of the uniform, helpfully. It’s paid the rent, bought the basics, and allowed them to save enough to--legally and unassumingly--purchase a used shuttle last night.

It’s a decent ship, less than ten years old, Corellian and quick. They’ve been eyeing it for weeks, once it became clear the credits would come through. Now, it’s parked on the roof of the tenement with the slightly more pedestrian speeders of neighbors with no aspirations to leave this rock.

(Not that their plan to latch onto the galaxy’s criminal underbelly for a living is at all grand. But they agreed early that it beats working themselves numb on the assembly line, and that it ought to keep them safely below the Republic’s radar.)

“I think just the kitchen,” Ren replies, but doesn’t move.

Hux, on the other hand, stretches his legs, starts disentangling himself from Ren.

“I love you,” he says, running a hand through Ren’s hair before sitting up. He’s gotten in the habit of saying it every day.

It’s calculated, of course, intentional and unspontaneous. He’s keeping a tally: after eight years, he’ll have said it on more days than he didn’t.

“I love you too.” Ren rolls over, then sits upright himself. He slides his hand under his pillow, as always, to extract the dice. This morning he wraps the chain around his finger, lets them swing and clink into each other.

“Stay here,” he says, after a moment. “I’ll make the tea.”

 

* * *

 

Hux doesn’t stay put, of course. As the kettle whistles, he strips the bed--that, they’re leaving behind, as the shuttle is fitted with a comfortable bunk. He folds the sheets into a half-empty crate, and takes the mug Ren offers him as he crosses over to the window. Hux joins him, presses against his side, soft where he’s pulled an open black sweater over his shirtsleeves.

The fog is clearing over the river, but the sky remains dark. It casts the flat roofs of the factories and the spires of tenements like this one a dismal gray. It’ll be raining soon, the fine spitting mist common in every season they’ve has seen here.

Hux blows on his tea. “Going to miss this?”

Ren snorts. “It’s no palace on Ganthel.”

Hux sympathizes--it’s hard not to bring up the _almost_ s. Until now, everything they’ve had was built on them.

“Neither is a second-hand cargo shuttle.”

It isn’t, just like the blaster on Ren’s night table isn’t his lightsaber and Hux is still getting used to the factory-wrought calluses on his fingers. None of this is what they wanted.

“I’ll take it over Chaos, though,” Ren says, after a moment.

Hux takes a tentative sip of the tea. It isn’t Tarine, but it’s strong enough. And he has to know. “But what about over living with the-- _conflict?_ ”

Ren’s free of the Light now, and seems more at peace for it. Hux hasn’t been able to find wording for _I hope you aren’t glad you offed yourself._

And Ren doesn’t exactly answer. “I think we could’ve had this, if we’d been in our right minds the day the _Finalizer_ went down.”

The _we_ is fair, but Hux cracks a smile.

“The Supreme Leader would have fled the Order to smuggle spice out of the Tatoo system?”

Ren bumps his shoulder. “If the Grand Marshal would have gone with me.”

It’s different now, from when they had this argument in Chaos. It’s no longer an argument, simply a-- a shared regret. They’ve wasted a year between hell, prison, and this miserable gray city.

“If only I’d considered this career path sooner,” he deadpans.

“You’ll make a good outlaw.”

Hux takes another sip of tea. “Already sort of am. Fifty-seven counts of war crimes and all that, on the loose.”

“Legally dead, though,” Ren corrects, looping an arm around Hux’s shoulders.

“You, too.”

Quiet settles between them. The traffic hums, and the nearest factories’ smokestacks belch to life.  Downriver, a waterspeeder churns against the current, leaving a frothy wake.

The industry here, the commerce--it really isn’t so different from Ganthel, except for the dismal climate. Ren might have chosen it, were it a few parsecs closer to the Core. The analysts’ assessments could never have captured the bleakness, and over roasted seeds in Ren’s bed, Hux might have agreed to anything.

That was a good night, no matter what came of it, or has become of them after.

“Ren?” He turns to Hux. “When we get to Tatooine, we’re stopping for _teziretts_ , yes?”

Abruptly, Ren leans over and presses his lips briefly to Hux’s temple. “I was planning on it,” he says into his hair.

Hux smiles, sets his mug on the windowsill, and kisses him.

Outside, the fog keeps lifting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it ends!
> 
> Thank you for coming on this journey with me! I never expected such a dark, peculiar story would get the attention it has, and I’m so grateful to everyone who’s read, subscribed, bookmarked, liked, RT’ed, commented, and made 😭 the most common emoji in my Twitter mentions. Love y’all!
> 
> As always, feel free to come hang out with me on Twitter. See you around 🧡🖤


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